The Palace

They who raised the dome of this story say
That the nurse, whom the plan of her. brain made gay,
Called in a wise master, his aid to lend,
'With a hundred arts at each finger’s end ;
A skilled geometer, trained and tried,
Through the maze of the stars a most trusty guide.
He had learned his figures from Almagest,
And his problems were troubles to Euclid’s rest.
If he found no compasses, ready at hand,
Two fingers drew deftly the circle he planned,
And the lines that he wanted most straight and true
Without the help of a rule he drew.
He had mounted up to the seventh sphere.
And built in Saturn a.- belvedere.
If his hand but turned to the mason’s saw,
The stone grew soft as the clay for awe.
When to architecture he turned his thought,
Wondrous and fair were the works he wrought.
The endless plain of the world on the space
Of his finger-nail he could truly trace.
And with heightened charm in the sketch he drew
The shape of a fairer creation grew.
There was life and soul in the drawing when
The lines were sketched by his artist pen.
If his fingers had graven a bird of stone,
It had risen up in the air and flown.
By the nurse’s order his hand of gold
Began the work on the plan she told.
There was hope in the sheen of the polished walls,
And the dawn of bliss gleamed through the stately halls.
The brightest marble adorned the floor.
And ivory shone on each ebony door.
Within the palace were chambers seven,
In number and sheen like the storeys of heaven,
Pure and polished and fair to view,
Each wrought of stone of a different hue ;
The seventh, fair as the seventh sphere —
All words, all painting would fail me here —
Forty gold pillars upheld, inlaid
With jewels, and beasts and birds portrayed.
Against each column a musk-deer leant,
And stored in the gold was the precious scent ;
And peacocks wrought in pure gold displayed
Their jewelled plumes in the long colonnade.
But a special marvel, eclipsing them,
Was a shady tree with a silver stem.
Never a man. might its like behold,
With leaves of turkis and boughs of gold.
On each branch was a bird, a wonder of skill,
With emerald wings and a ruby bill.
The painter there, to his orders true,
The forms of Zulaikha and Yusuf drew,
Like lovers both of one heart and mind,
With the arm of each round the other twined.
Like heaven was the ceiling, for wrought thereon
The sun and the moon in their glory shone.
In the prime of Spring on the walls outspread
To the wondering view was a bright rose-bed,
And the eye might mark in each narrow space
The rose-sprays twined in a close embrace.
Wherever the foot on the carpet stepped
Two lovely roses together slept.
Search through the palace, no spot was there
But showed a type of that beauteous pair.
Under the foot, overhead, and around.
An emblem of two happy lovers was found.
The love of Zulaikha still grew meanwhile,
And rose each day with the rising pile.
As the idol-house met her eager gaze,
With fiercer fire was her heart ablaze.
There thrills a new pang through the lover's breast
When he looks on the picture of her he loves best,
The fair lines of her features his woes recall,
And he sinks in his sorrow love’s helpless thrall.