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Pause at the Treatise of Parmenides
And hide it there, for Caliphs to world's end
Must keep that perfect, as they keep her song
So great its fame.

When fitting time has passed
The parchment will disclose to some learned man
A mystery that else had found no chronicler
But the wild Bedouin. Though I approve
Those wanderers that welcomed in their tents
What great Harun-al-Rashid, occupied
With Persian wars or Greek ambassadors
Or those who need his bounty or his law,
Must needs neglect; I cannot hide the truth
That wandering in a desert, featureless
As air under a wing, can give bird's wit.
In after time they will speak much of me
And speak but fantasy. Recall the year
When our beloved Caliph put to death
His Vizier Jaffer for an unknown reason;
"If but the shirt upon my body knew it
I'd tear it off and throw it in the fire."
That speech was all that the town knew, but he
Seemed for a while to have grown young again;
Seemed so on purpose, muttered Jaffer's friends,
That none might know that he was conscience-struck—
But that's a traitor's thought. Enough for me
That in the early summer of the year
The mightiest of the princes of the world
Came to the least considered of his courtiers
Sat down upon the fountain's marble edge
One hand amid the goldfish in the pool;
And thereupon a colloquy took place
That I commend to all the chroniclers
To show how violent great hearts can lose
Their bitterness and find the honeycomb.
"I have brought a slender bride into the house;
You know the saying 'change the bride with Spring,'
And she and I, being sunk in happiness,
Cannot endure to think you tread these paths,