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THE SINGING CARAVAN

RECENT POETRY

THE SINGING CARAVAN

A SUFI TALE

BY

ROBERT VANSITTART

Each man is many as a caravan;

His straggling selves collect in tales like these.

Only the love of one can make him one.

Who takes the Sufi Way—the Way of Peace?

NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
1919

Printed in Great Britain

IN MEMORIAM

MY BROTHER ARNOLD

2nd Lieutenant, 11th Hussars
KILLED IN ACTION NEAR YPRES
MAY 1915

In twenty years of lands and seas and cities

I had small joy and sought for it the more,

Thinking: "If ever I am πολύμητις,

'Tis yours to draw upon the hard-won store."

I had some bouts from Samarkand to Paris,

And took some falls 'twixt Sweden and Sudan.

If I was slow and patient learning parries,

I hoped to teach you when you were a man.

I cannot fall to whining round the threshold

Where Death awaited you. I lack the skill

Of hands for ever working out a fresh hold

On life. In mystic ways I serve you still.

The age of miracles is not yet ended.

As on the humble feast of Galilee

Surely a touch of heaven has descended

On the cheap earthen vessel, even on me,

Whose weak content—the soul I travail under—

Unstable as water, to myself untrue,

God's mercy makes an everlasting wonder,

Stronger than life or death, my love of you.

I am indebted to Mr. Arthur Humphreys, Mr. John Murray, and the Editor of the Spectator for kind permission to reproduce a few of the shorter poems in this tale of Persian mystics. I have included them, firstly, because I wished otherwise new work, being a memorial, to include such fragments of the past as might be worth preserving; secondly, because decreasing leisure inspires a diffidence in the future that may justify me in asking a reader or a friend to judge or remember me only by "Foolery" and "The Singing Caravan."

R. V.

[CONTENTS]

PRELUDE

The sun smote Elburz like a gong.

Slow down the mountain's molten face

Zigzagged the caravan of song.

Time was its slave and went its pace.

It bore a white Transcaspian Queen

Whose barque had touched at Enzelí.

Splendid in jewelled palanquin

She cleft Iran from sea to sea,

Bound for the Persian Gulf of Pearls,

Where demons sail for drifting isles

With bodyguards of dancing girls

And four tamed winds for music, smiles

For passports. Thus the caravan,

Singing from chief to charvadar,

Reached the great gate of screened Tehran.

The burrows of the dim bazaar

Swarmed thick to see the vision pass

On broidered camels like a fleet

Of swaying silence. One there was

Who joined the strangers in the street.

They called him Dreamer-of-the-Age,

The least of Allah's Muslimeen

Who knew the joys of pilgrimage

And wore the sign of sacred green,

A poet, poor and wistful-eyed.

Him all the beauty and the song

Drew by swift magic to her side,

And in a trance he went along

Past friends who questioned of his goal:

"The Brazen Cliffs? The Realms of Musk?

Goes he to Mecca for his soul?..."

The town-light dwindled in the dusk

Behind. Ahead Misr? El Katíf?

The moon far up a brine-green sky

Made Demavend a huge pale reef

Set in an ocean long gone dry.

Bleached mosques like dwarf cave-stalagmites,

Smooth silver-bouldered biyaban

And sevenfold velvet of white nights

Vied with the singing caravan

To make her pathway plain.

Then one

Beside the poet murmured low:

"I plod behind, sun after sun,

O master, whither do we go?

"Are we for some palmed port of Fars,

Or tombed Kerbela, or Baghdad

The Town-of-Knowledge-of-the-Stars?

Is worship wise or are we mad?"

Answered the poet: "Do we ask

Allah to buy each Friday's throng?

None to whom worship is a task

Should join the caravan of song.

"With heart and eyes unquestioning, friend,

We follow love from sea to sea,

And Love and Prayer have common end:

'May God be merciful to me!'"

So fared they, camped from noon to even,

Till dawn, quick-groping through the gloom,

Pounced on gilt planets low in heaven.

Thus they beheld the domes of Kum.

And onward nightly. Though the dust

Swirled in dread shapes of desert Jinn,

Ever the footsore poet's trust

Soared to the jewelled palanquin,

Parched, but still singing: "God, being great,

Lent me a star from sea to sea,

The drop in his hand-hollow, Fate.

He holds it high, and signs to me

"Although She—She may not ..."

"For thirst

My songs and dreams like mirage fail.

Yea, mad "—his fellow pilgrim cursed—

"I was. The Queen lifts not her veil."

"Put no conditions to her glance,

O happy desert, where the guide

Is Love's own self, Life's only chance ..."

He saw not where the other died,

But pressed on strongly, loth to halt

At Persia's pride, Rose-Ispahan,

Whose hawks are bathed in pure cobalt.

To meet the singing caravan

Came henna-bearded prince and sage

With henna-fingered houris, who

Strove to retard the pilgrimage,

Saying: "Our streets are fair and you

"A poet. Sing of us instead.

God may be good, but life is short.

Yon are the mountains of the dead.

Here are clean robes to wear at court."

He said: "I seek a bliss beyond

The range of your muezzin-call.

Do birds cease song till heaven respond?

The road is naught. The Hope is all."

"You know not this Transcaspian Queen,

Or what the journey's end may be.

Fool among Allah's Muslimeen,

You chase a myth from sea to sea."

"Because I bargain not nor guess

If Waste or Garden wait for me,

Love gives me inner loveliness.

I hold to her from sea to sea."

So he was gone, nor seemed to care

For beckoning shade, or boasting brook,

Or human alabaster-ware

Flaunted before him in the suk,

Nor paused at sunburnt far Shiraz,

The home of sinful yellow wine,

Where morning mists, like violet gauze,

Deck the bare hills, and blossoms twine

In seething coloured foam around

The lighthouse minarets.

And sheer—

A thin cascade bereft of sound—

The track falls down to dank Bushír.

The caravan slipped to the plain.

Its song rose through the rising damp,

Till, through the grey stockade of rain,

The Gulf of Pearls shone like a lamp.

Here waiting rode a giant dhow,

Each hand a captive Roumi lord,

Who rose despite his chains to bow

As straight her beauty went aboard,

Sailed. For the Tableland of Rhyme?

The Crystal Archipelago?

Who knows! This happened on a time

Among the times of long ago.

He only, Dreamer-of-the-Age,

Was left alone upon the sands,

The goal of his long pilgrimage,

The soil of all the promised lands,

Watching the dhow cut like a sword

The leaden waves. Yet, ere she sailed,

God poured on broken eyes reward

Out of Heaven's heart.

The Queen unveiled.

There for a space fulfilment shone,

While worship had his soul for priest

And altar. Then the light was gone,

And on the sea the singing ceased.

And is this all my story? Yes,

Save that the Sufi's dream is true.

Dearest, in its deep lowliness

This tale is told of me and you.

O love of mine, while I have breath,

Whatever my last fate shall be,

I seek you, you alone, till death

With all my life—from sea to sea.

And God be merciful to me.

I
THE VIEW OF THE WATCHMEN

The pilgrims from the north

Beat on the southern gate

All eager to set forth,

In little mood to wait

While watchman Abdelal

Expounded the Koran

To that wise seneschal,

His mate, Ghaffír Sultan.

At length Ghaffír: "Enough!"

Even watchmen's heads may nod.

"Asräil is not rough

If we have faith in God."

His fellow tapped the book:

The Darawish discuss

The point you overlook:

Has Allah faith in us?

Know, then, that Allah, fresh

And splendid as a boy

Who thinks no ill of flesh,

Had one desire: a toy.

And so he took for site

To build his perfect plan

The Earth, where His delight

Was manufactured: Man.

Ah, had we ever seen

The draft, our Maker's spit,

I think we must have been

Drawn to live up to it.

God was so pure and kind

He showed Shaitan the lease

Of earth that He had signed

For us, His masterpiece.

The pilgrims cried: "You flout

Our calm. Beware. It flags.

Unbar and let us out,

Sons of a thousand rags."

And Abdelal said: "Hark!

Methought I heard a din."

Said Ghaffír: "After dark

I let no devils in.

"Proceed." He sucked his pipe:

God in His happiest mood

Laid down our prototype,

And saw that man was good.

Aglow with generous pride:

"Shaitan the son of Jann,

This is my crown," He cried.

"Bow down and worship man."

Said Evil with a smirk—

He was too sly to hiss—

"I cannot praise your work.

I could have bettered this."

God said: "I could have sown

The soil my puppet delves,

Yet rather gave my own

Power to perfect themselves."

Still the fiend stiffened. "I

Bow not." Our prophet saith

That he would not comply

Because he had no faith

In us. He only saw

The worst of Allah's toy,

The springs, some surface flaw,

The strengthening alloy.

Said God: "The faults are mine.

I gave him hope and doubt,

The mind that my design

Shall have to work Me out.

What though he fall! Is love

So faint that I should grieve?

How else, friend, should I prove

To him that I believe?

"And how else should he rise?

Lo, I, that made the night,

Have given his conscience eyes

Therein to find the Right.

I have stretched out his hand,

Oh, not to grasp but feel,

Have taught his aims to land,

But tipped the aims with steel;

"Have given him iron resolve

And one great master-key,

Courage, to bid revolve

The hinge of destiny,

And beams from heaven to build

The road to Otherwise,

With broken gloom to gild

The causeway of his sighs

"Whereby I watch him come

At last to judge of Me,

Beyond the thunder's drum,

The cymbals of the sea.

Aye, Shaitan, plumb the Space