BENEATH the shadow of a breezeless palm
Mahmoud Ben Suleim, in the evening calm,
Sat, with his gravely meditative eyes
Turned on the waning wonder of the skies;
What time beside him paused a brother sage,
Whose flowing locks, like his, were whit with age:
His gaze a half-veiled fire, seemed sadly cast
Inward, to scan the records of his past–
Perchance the past of man–and thence to draw
From far experience, sanctified by awe
Of God’s mysterious ways, some hint to tell
Who of the dead in heaven and who in hell
Dwelt now in endless bliss or endless bale.
Thus, while he mused, the old man’s face grew pale
With stringent memories; on his laboring thought
Vague speculations, dim and doubtful, wrought
From out the fragments of the vanished years.
At length he said: “Ben Suleim, lend thine ears
To that I fain would ask thee. Thou art wise
In sacred lore, in pure philosophies;
So tell me now thine inmost thought of heaven
And heaven’s fair habitants.”
“Whoe’er hath striven,”
Ben Suleim answered, “to the extremest verge
Of spiritual power, across death’s dreary surge
Hath passed to find the fathomless peace of God!”
“Yea,” quoth the other, smiting on the sod
His staff impatiently. “I know! I know!
But who of all we have seen or loved below
Think’st thou in Aidenn?”
Slowly from his lips,
Wrapped by the smoke-wreaths in a half-eclipse,
Ben Suleim’s pipe was lowered: “My friend,” said he,
“Hark to this vision of eternity,
Which in the long-gone time of youth did seem
To rise before me in a twilight dream.
Methought the life on earth had passed away,
That near me spread the new, immortal day
Of Paradise; but yet mine eyes looked back
On this our clouded world, and marked the track
My waning life-course still left glimmering there.
Behold! all dues of funeral dole and prayer
Mine heirs had paid me; through the cypress gloom
I saw the glitter of my new-made tomb,
Whereon so many a blazoned virtue shone,
A blush seemed gathering o’er the hardened stone,
And I, albeit a spirit, flushed with shame.
Nathless, just their to Eden gates I came,
And, at the outmost wicket thundering loud,
Summoned full soon an angel from the cloud
Which girds those heavenly portals, blent with mist
Of shifting rainbow arcs of amethyst,
Who, somewhat harshly for an angel, said
I knocked as if an hundred thousand dead,
Not one poor soul, besieged the heavenly door.
He raised his luminous hands, which hovered o’er
For a brief moment, like a flash of stars,
The sapphire brilliance of the circling bars,
Then one by one unclosed them. Entered in
The realm celestial, safe from pain and sin,
I stretched at ease, with shadows cool and dim
Floating about me, thus did question him:
‘Fair Seraph, speak. Is not this land divine,
Rife with pure souls, once faithful friends of mine?’
‘Nay! be content if wandering here and there,
Thou meet’st a few–none in the loftiest sphere.’
‘Where, then,’ I cried, ‘is holy Ibn Bec
(Paul Hamilton Hayne)
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Based on Topics: Man Poems, God Poems, Life Poems, World Poems, Soul Poems, Youth Poems, Heaven Poems, Dreams Poems, Friendship Poems, Cry Poems, Fire PoemsBased on Keywords: habitants, speculations, breezeless, smoke-wreaths, long-gone, aidenn, half-veiled, stringent, bec, man-and, ibn