Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-13.pdf/216

The widow wept; and some around the dame
Twittered, like sparrows in the early morn,
Their heads commingled. Others, standing shy
Upon the outskirts of the gaudy flock,
Cooed, breast to breast, like sunny doves; and some
Scolded, like magpies, fiercely to themselves,
For want of listeners. Halil only smiled.
Then cried another, fine in purple silk,
Lifting her henna-tinted hand that blazed
With a round ruby, lady by her mien:
"Shame on you, Pacha! You have taken our seat
Upon the hill-side, where we sat and looked
At holy Asia as the sun went down,—
Ay, and defiled it, made it lairs for dogs
In heaps of rubbish!" Here the better sort
Essayed a groan, that ended in a sigh
Half full of tears,—the woman's way, good lack!
Others-declaimed in various treble tones.
One said the digging had destroyed her well;
Another that her windows all were blind
Against the growing wall; another vowed
She had been robbed of pics on pics of land
By limits falsely run. Halil began
To look around him, with his eyes upturned,
As though he saw the planets through the roof
And held no commerce with terrestrial things.
By this the beldame, reaching out her neck,
Her eyes no longer running, found a tongue.—
"Your heart is hard; I see it in your face;
But tremble. Pacha, lest the sorrowing poor
Should cry against you! For that sacred cry
Finds soonest entrance into Allah's ears:
Yea, while the very prayers of holy men
Stand humbly waiting!" Halil smiled again;
For he was skeptical and weak of faith,
Like almost all our men of high degree,
And scarce saw God in anything, they say,—
Praise be to Allah, that such souls are damned!
But here his patience failed him. "Get ye gone!"
He cried, as though he shouted to his men
Amidst the clattering engines—"Get ye gone!
Ye flock of talking parrots, badly taught
By shallow knaves, my noted enemies!
And you, ill-boding raven, evil-eyed,
To whom another's pleasure is offence!
Ye know no more of custom nor of law
Than yawping geese, ye painted harridans!
Forgetful of your sex, and what is due
To man, your master, you confront me here—
Loose tonged and shameless as the Pera-girls
Who sell their favors;—and on what pretext?
To judge a thing I have already judged,
As witness by my actions!" Such his wrath
That even the widow trembled, and the rout