ies gray beneath the moon.
And thro its magic doors
You seem like a spirit flower,
Wandering back from Allah's bourne
To seek for some lost boon.

Under the Indian stars
I see you softly moving,
Among your jewel-lit maidens there,
A sweet and ghostly queen,
And the scent of attar flung
In your marble font seems proving
That passion never can die from love,
If truly love has been.

Under the Indian stars
_He_ comes, "the Shadow of Allah,"
Jehan, the lord of Magnificence,
The liege who holds your heart.
The silver doors swing back
And alone with him you hallow
The amorous night--whose moon has made
Such visions in me start.

Under the Indian stars--
But the end of all is moaning!
I hear his dying breath that from
Your Tomb shall never die.
For every jasper flower
He set in its dream seems loaning
To Beauty a grief, Mumtaz Mahal,
And unto Fate a sigh.

LOVE'S CYNIC

I

O you poets, ever pretending
Love is immortal, pipe the truth!
Empty your books of lies, the ending
Of no passion can be--Youth.
"Heaven," you breathe, "will join the broken?"
Come, was the Infinite e'er wed,
That He must evermore be thinking
Of your wedding bed?

II

Pipe the truth! tho it clip the glamour
Out of your rhymes and rip your dream.
Do you believe words can enamour
Death and dry up Lethe's stream?
Death? it is but a Sponge that passes,
One the Appeaseless e'er will squeeze
Back into Lethe's flood--whose lasting
Is eternities.

III

"False!" cry you, "and an unbeseeming
Blasphemy!"--Well, look around.
Is it not only in blaspheming
Truth is ever to be found?
Whether it be, one thing I ask you,
Lovers and poets, tell, I pray,
Was there ever a love-oath ended
Ere the Judgment Day?

IV

"O," you answer, "ill is in all things."
But in an ancient lie what's good?
Is it not better just to call things
What they are--not what we would?
When you are clinging to your mistress,
Love has the face of Eternity.
Cling to her then, but know that Wanting
Fools the best that be.

V

"Yet her brows and her eyes that murmur
All the music," you say, "of God!"
Press her lips but a little firmer--
You will feel that they are--sod.
"But there is living soul beyond them,
And it is love's till all things end?"
Children alone build Paradises
With but pence to spend.

VI

"Ai-ho now! that is like the cynic,"
Pitying runs your poet-smile,
"He has sat at the Dev