Part 10 (1/2)
I saw hile--I saw hily than iron bonds, and the ic of her beauty and concentrated will and passion entered into him and overpowered him-- ay, even there, in the presence of the body of the woh to die for hih, but he should not be too greatly blamed, and be sure his sin will find him out The temptress who drew hireater than the loveliness of the daughters of ain and now her perfect forainst his own; and thus, with the corpse of his dead love for an altar, did Leo Vincey plight his troth to her red- handed ht it for ever and a day For those who sell the down the price of their own honour, and throwing their soul into the balance to sink the scale to the level of their lusts, can hope for no deliverance here or hereafter As they have sown, so shall they reap and reap, even when the poppy flowers of passion have withered in their hands, and their harvest is but bitter tares, garnered in satiety
Suddenly, with a snake-like ain broke out into her low laugh of triumphant mockery
”Did I not tell thee that within a little space thou wouldst creep to my knee, oh Kallikrates? And surely the space has not been a great one!”
Leo groaned in shah he was overcome and stricken down, he was not so lost as to be unaware of the depth of the degradation to which he had sunk On the contrary, his better nature rose up in arh later on
Ayesha laughed again, and then quickly veiled herself, andthe whole scene with curious startled eyes The girl left, and presently returned, followed by two n Thereon they all three seized the body of poor Ustane by the arh the curtains at the end Leo watched it for a little while, and then covered his eyes with his hand, and it too, to my excited fancy, seemed to watch us as it went
”There passes the dead past,” said Ayesha, solemnly, as the curtains shook and fell back into their places, when the ghastly procession had vanished behind them And then, with one of those extraordinary transitions of which I have already spoken, she again threw off her veil, and broke out, after the ancient and poetic fashi+on of the dwellers in Arabia,[] into a paean of triumph or epithalaly difficult to render into English, and ought by rights to be sung to the music of a cantata, rather than written and read It was divided into two parts--one descriptive or definitive, and the other personal; and, as nearly as I can remember, ran as follows:-- Love is like a flower in the desert
It is like the aloe of Arabia that blooms but once and dies; it bloohtness of its beauty is set upon the waste as a star is set upon a storm
It hath the sun above that is the Spirit, and above it blows the air of its divinity
At the echoing of a step, Love blooms, I say; I say Love blooms, and bends her beauty down to him who passeth by
He plucketh it, yea, he plucketh the red cup that is full of honey, and beareth it away; away across the desert, away till the flower be withered, away till the desert be done
There is only one perfect flower in the wilderness of Life
That flower is Love!
There is only one fixed star in the
That star is Love!
There is only one hope in our despairing night
That hope is Love!
All else is false All else is shadowupon water All else is wind and vanity
Who shall say what is the weight or the measure of Love?
It is born of the flesh, it dwelleth in the spirit From each doth it draw its comfort
For beauty it is as a star
Many are its shapes, but all are beautiful, and none knohere the star rose, or the horizon where it shall set
[] A the ancient Arabians the power of poetic declahest honour and esteem, and he who excelled in it was known as ”Khateb,” or Orator Every year a general assembly was held at which the rival poets repeated their coed to be the best were, so soon as the knowledge and the art of writing becaold, and publicly exhibited, being known as ”Al Modhahabat,” or golden verses In the poeiven above by Mr Holly, Ayesha evidently followed the traditional poetic hts in a series of somewhat disconnected sentences, each rerace of its expression --Editor
Then, turning to Leo, and laying her hand upon his shoulder, she went on in a fuller and radually grew and swelled fro have I loved thee, oh,have I waited for thee, and behold my reward is at hand--is here!
Far away I saw thee once, and thou wast taken frorave sowed I the seed of patience, and shone upon it with the sun of hope, and watered it with tears of repentance, and breathed on it with the breath ofup, and borne fruit Lo! out of the grave hath it sprung Yea, fro the dry bones and ashes of the dead
I have waited and my reward is with ht back to me him that was dead
Therefore do I rejoice, for fair is the future
Green are the paths that we shall tread across the everlasting ht hath fled away into the valleys
The dawn kisseth the mountain tops
Soft shall we live, o
Crowned shall we be with the diade and wonder struck all peoples of the world, Blinded shall fall before our beauty and reatness thunder on, Rolling like a chariot through the dust of endless days
Laughing shall we speed in our victory and po the hills
Onward, still triumphant to a triumph ever new!
Onward, in our power to a power unattained!
Onward, never weary, clad with splendour for a robe!
Till acco down
She paused in her strange and orical chant, of which I aive the burden, and that feebly enough, and then said-- ”Perchance thou dost not believe my word, Kallikrates--perchance thou thinkest that I do delude thee, and that I have not lived these ain to me Nay, look not so --put away that pale cast of doubt, for oh be sure herein can error find no foothold! Sooner shall the suns forget their course and the s miss her nest, than my soul shall swear a lie and be led astray from thee, Kallikrates Blind me, take away mine eyes, and let the darkness utterly fence otten voice, striking ainst the portals of my sense than can the call of brazen-throated clarions:--stop upalso, and let a thousand touch me on the brow, and I would name thee out of all:--yea, rob me of every sense, and see me stand deaf and blind, and duh the value of a touch, yet wouldchild and cry unto my heart, behold Kallikrates! behold, thou watcher, the watches of thy night are ended! behold thou who seekest in the night season, thyStar ariseth”
She paused awhile and then continued, ”But stay, if thy heart is yet hardened against the e of that which thou dost find too deep to understand, even now shall it be given to thee, and to thee also, oh my Holly Bear each one of you a lamp, and follow afterto think--indeed, speaking for myself, I had almost abandoned the function in circumstances under which to think seeht fell hourly helpless against a black wall of wonder--we took the la to the end of her ”boudoir,” she raised a curtain and revealed a little stair of the sort that is so common in these dim caves of Kor As we hurried down the stair I observed that the steps orn in the centre to such an extent that some of theuessed their original height, to about three and a half Now, all the other steps that I had seen in the caves were practically unworn, as was to be expected, seeing that the only traffic which ever passed upon them was that of those who bore a fresh burden to the tomb Therefore this fact struck s do strike us when our minds are absolutely overwhelmed by a sudden rush of powerful sensations; beaten flat, as it were, like a sea beneath the first burst of a hurricane, so that every little object on the surface starts into an unnatural prominence
At the bottom of the staircase I stood and stared at the worn steps, and Ayesha, turning, saw me
”Wonderest thou whose are the feet that have worn away the rock, ht feet! I can remember when those stairs were fresh and level, but for two thousand years and one down hither day by day, and see, my sandals have worn out the solid rock!”