The Gift of Harun Al-Rashid

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1924from Narrative and Dramatic Poems193 lines

Kusta ben Luka is my name, I writeTo Abd al-Rabban; fellow roysterer once,Now the good Caliph’s learned Treasurer,And for no ear but his.Carry this letterThrough the great gallery of the Treasure HouseWhere banners of the Caliphs hang, night-colouredBut brilliant as the night’s embroidery,And wait war’s music; pass the little gallery;Pass books of learning from ByzantiumWritten in gold upon a purple stain,And pause at last, I was about to say,At the great book of Sappho’s song; but no,For should you leave my letter there, a boy’sLove-lorn, indifferent hands might come upon itAnd let it fall unnoticed to the floor.Pause at the Treatise of ParmenidesAnd hide it there, for Caliphs to world’s endMust keep that perfect, as they keep her songSo great its fame.When fitting time has passedThe parchment will disclose to some learned manA mystery that else had found no chroniclerBut the wild Bedouin. Though I approveThose wanderers that welcomed in their tentsWhat great Harun al-Rashid, occupiedWith Persian embassy or Grecian war,Must needs neglect; I cannot hide the truthThat wandering in a desert, featurelessAs air under a wing, can give birds’ wit.In after time they will speak much of meAnd speak but fantasy. Recall the yearWhen our beloved Caliph put to deathHis Vizir Jaffer for an unknown reason;“If but the shirt upon my body knew itI’d tear it off and throw it in the fire.”That speech was all that the town knew, but heSeemed 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 meThat in the early summer of the yearThe mightiest of the princes of the worldCame to the least considered of his courtiers;Sat down upon the fountain’s marble edgeOne hand amid the goldfish in the pool;And thereupon a colloquy took placeThat I commend to all the chroniclersTo show how violent great hearts can loseTheir bitterness and find the honey-comb.“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,When evening stirs the jasmine, and yetAre brideless.”“I am falling into years.”

“But such as you and I do not seem oldLike men who live by habit. Every dayI ride with falcon to the river’s edgeOr carry the ringed mail upon my back,Or court a woman; neither enemy,Game-bird, nor woman does the same thing twice;And so a hunter carries in the eyeA mimicry of youth. Can poet’s thoughtThat springs from body and in body fallsLike this pure jet, now lost amid blue skyNow bathing lily leaf and fishes’ scale,Be mimicry?”“What matter if our soulsAre nearer to the surface of the bodyThan souls that start no game and turn no rhyme!The soul’s own youth and not the body’s youthShows through our lineaments. My candle’s bright,My lantern is too loyal not to showThat it was made in your great father’s reign.”

“And yet the jasmine season warms our blood.”

“Great prince, forgive the freedom of my speech;You think that love has seasons, and you thinkThat if the spring bear off what the spring gaveThe heart need suffer no defeat; but IWho have accepted the Byzantine faith,That seems unnatural to Arabian minds,Think when I choose a bride I choose for ever;And if her eye should not grow bright for mineOr brighten only for some younger eye,My heart could never turn from daily ruin,Nor find a remedy.”“But what if IHave lit upon a woman, who so sharesYour thirst for those old crabbed mysteries,So strains to look beyond our life, an eyeThat never knew that strain would scarce seem bright,And yet herself can seem youth’s very fountain,Being all brimmed with life.”“Were it but trueI would have found the best that life can give,Companionship in those mysterious thingsThat make a man’s soul or a woman’s soulItself and not some other soul.”“That loveMust needs be in this life and in what followsUnchanging and at peace, and it is rightEvery philosopher should praise that love.But I being none can praise its opposite.It makes my passion stronger but to thinkLike passion stirs the peacock and his mate,The wild stag and the doe; that mouth to mouthIs a man’s mockery of the changeless soul.”And thereupon his bounty gave what nowCan shake more blossom from autumnal chillThan all my bursting springtime knew. A girlPerched in some window of her mother’s houseHad watched my daily passage to and fro;Had heard impossible history of my past;Imagined some impossible historyLived at my side; thought time’s disfiguring touchGave but more reason for a woman’s care.Yet was it love of me, or was it loveOf the stark mystery that has dazed my sight,Perplexed her fantasy and planned her care?Or did the torchlight of that mysteryPick out my features in such light and shadeTwo contemplating passions chose one themeThrough sheer bewilderment? She had not pacedThe garden paths, nor counted up the rooms,Before she had spread a book upon her kneesAnd asked about the pictures or the text;And often those first days I saw her stareOn old dry writing in a learned tongue,On old dry faggots that could never pleaseThe extravagance of spring; or move a handAs if that writing or the figured pageWere some dear cheek.Upon a moonless nightI sat where I could watch her sleeping form,And wrote by candle-light; but her form moved,And fearing that my light disturbed her sleepI rose that I might screen it with a cloth.I heard her voice, “Turn that I may expoundWhat’s bowed your shoulder and made pale your cheek”;And saw her sitting upright on the bed;Or was it she that spoke or some great Djinn?I say that a Djinn spoke. A live-long hourShe seemed the learned man and I the child;Truths without father came, truths that no bookOf all the uncounted books that I have read,Nor thought out of her mind or mine begot,Self-born, high-born, and solitary truths,Those terrible implacable straight linesDrawn through the wandering vegetative dream,Even those truths that when my bones are dustMust drive the Arabian host.The voice grew still,And she lay down upon her bed and slept,But woke at the first gleam of day, rose upAnd swept the house and sang about her workIn childish ignorance of all that passed.A dozen nights of natural sleep, and thenWhen the full moon swam to its greatest heightShe rose, and with her eyes shut fast in sleepWalked through the house. Unnoticed and unfeltI wrapped her in a heavy hooded cloak, and she,Half running, dropped at the first ridge of the desertAnd there marked out those emblems on the sandThat day by day I study and marvel at,With her white finger. I led her home asleepAnd once again she rose and swept the houseIn childish ignorance of all that passed.Even to-day, after some seven yearsWhen maybe thrice in every moon her mouthMurmured the wisdom of the desert Djinns,She keeps that ignorance, nor has she nowThat first unnatural interest in my books.It seems enough that I am there; and yetOld fellow student, whose most patient earHeard all the anxiety of my passionate youth,It seems I must buy knowledge with my peace.What if she lose her ignorance and soDream that I love her only for the voice,That every gift and every word of praiseIs but a payment for that midnight voiceThat is to age what milk is to a child!Were she to lose her love, because she had lostHer confidence in mine, or even loseIts first simplicity, love, voice and all,All my fine feathers would be plucked awayAnd I left shivering. The voice has drawnA quality of wisdom from her love’sParticular quality. The signs and shapes;All those abstractions that you fancied wereFrom the great treatise of Parmenides;All, all those gyres and cubes and midnight thingsAre but a new expression of her bodyDrunk with the bitter sweetness of her youth.And now my utmost mystery is out.A woman’s beauty is a storm-tossed banner;Under it wisdom stands, and I alone⁠—Of all Arabia’s lovers I alone⁠—Nor dazzled by the embroidery, nor lostIn the confusion of its night-dark folds,Can hear the armed man speak.

Text: Poetry, by W. B. Yeats (Standard Ebooks, 2024), from the collected editions of 1908 to 1928. Public domain.

In brief

Summary

An old scholar's young wife speaks strange wisdom in her sleep.

The poem is a secret letter. Kusta ben Luka, an ageing scholar at the court of the Caliph Harun al-Rashid, writes to an old friend, now the Caliph's Treasurer, and asks him to hide it among the books. He tells how the Caliph urged him to take a bride and gave him one: a young woman who shared his love of "old crabbed mysteries". Soon after the marriage she began to sit up in her sleep and speak truths he had never found in any book, and once she walked asleep into the desert and drew emblems in the sand. Awake she remembers nothing. Kusta's fear is that she might come to think he loves her only for the voice. His final discovery is that the wisdom comes from her love and her youth, and that he alone can hear it.

Lines to remember

Self-born, high-born, and solitary truths,

All, all those gyres and cubes and midnight things

A woman's beauty is a storm-tossed banner;

Line by line

Lines 1 to 19Where to hide a letter
Kusta ben Luka writes to his old drinking friend Abd al-Rabban, now "the good Caliph's learned Treasurer". He asks him to hide the letter not in "the great book of Sappho's song", where a love-lorn boy might drop it, but in the Treatise of Parmenides, which caliphs must keep safe for ever.
Lines 20 to 28Truth against rumour
In time the parchment will reveal a mystery that only the wild Bedouin would otherwise tell. He respects those desert wanderers, but a life in a desert "featureless / As air under a wing" can give them "birds' wit": he wants a sober record, not their fantasy.
Lines 29 to 48The Caliph's visit
He recalls the year the Caliph put his Vizir Jaffer to death. Afterwards Harun seemed young again, and one summer day "The mightiest of the princes of the world" came to Kusta, sat on the edge of the fountain with a hand among the goldfish, and began a talk that shows how great hearts can "find the honey-comb".
Lines 49 to 73Is he too old
The Caliph has taken a new bride and urges Kusta to marry too. "I am falling into years," Kusta replies. Harun answers that hunters and poets do not age like men of habit; Kusta says only the soul's youth shows, and jokes that his lantern was made in the reign of Harun's father.
Lines 74 to 102Two kinds of love
Kusta, of "the Byzantine faith", chooses a bride for ever and could not bear her love to fade. Harun offers a woman who shares his "thirst for those old crabbed mysteries". Kusta calls such companionship the best life gives; Harun, no philosopher, prefers passion that changes, like the peacock's or the stag's.
Lines 103 to 127The bride
The Caliph's gift is a girl who had watched Kusta pass her mother's window and imagined his life. Kusta wonders whether she loved him or "the stark mystery" around him. From the first days she pored over his books, touching the writing "As if that writing or the figured page / Were some dear cheek".
Lines 128 to 149The voice in the night
On a moonless night she sits up asleep and speaks: "Or was it she that spoke or some great Djinn?" For an hour she is the teacher and he the child, uttering "Self-born, high-born, and solitary truths". In the morning she sweeps the house and sings, knowing nothing of it.
Lines 150 to 165Emblems in the sand
At full moon she walks in her sleep to the edge of the desert and draws emblems in the sand with "her white finger", which he still studies. Seven years later the voice still comes "thrice in every moon", and she keeps her ignorance, no longer even curious about his books.
Lines 166 to 186His fear
He fears she will learn the truth and think he loves her only "for the voice", and so lose her trust. Then he admits the heart of the mystery: the voice draws its wisdom from her love, and "those gyres and cubes and midnight things" are "a new expression of her body".
Lines 187 to 193The banner
His "utmost mystery" is out. A woman's beauty is "a storm-tossed banner" with wisdom standing under it, and he alone among Arabia's lovers, not dazzled by its embroidery, can "hear the armed man speak".

Themes

Love and wisdom

Kusta cannot separate what he loves from what he learns. He asks whether the girl loved him or "the stark mystery" about him, and fears she will think he loves her only for the voice. The poem's answer is that the wisdom grows out of the love: the diagrams are "a new expression of her body", and the banner of beauty shelters the armed man of wisdom.

Age and youth

An old man marries a young woman, and the poem is frank about the gap. Kusta says "I am falling into years" and his lantern is old, while the Caliph insists that poets and hunters keep "A mimicry of youth". The girl's youth becomes the source of what he values most: the voice is to age "what milk is to a child".

Secret knowledge

The poem is full of hiding: a letter slipped into a philosopher's treatise, truths spoken in sleep, emblems drawn in sand by a sleepwalker who forgets them. Kusta distrusts rumour and the "fantasy" of chroniclers, yet his own knowledge comes from a source he cannot fully explain, "truths without father".

Context

The poem was first printed in a book in The Cat and the Moon and Certain Poems (Cuala Press, 1924), and the Collected Poems of 1933 dates it 1923. It is set at the court of Harun al-Rashid, the caliph of Baghdad familiar from The Thousand and One Nights, and the speaker takes his name from Qusta ibn Luqa, a Christian scholar and translator of the ninth century.

The poem is usually read as a veiled account of Yeats's own marriage. George Yeats, whom he married in October 1917, began automatic writing on their honeymoon, and those sessions supplied the system of his book A Vision, with its gyres and geometric figures. Kusta's young bride, speaking wisdom in her sleep that she does not remember, mirrors that story at a distance of a thousand years.

Form

One hundred and ninety-three lines of blank verse, unrhymed five-beat lines, written as a letter. The long central conversation with the Caliph is set out in quoted speeches, with brief breaks after it. Sentences often run across many lines and break off mid-line, which suits a learned man thinking aloud, adding second thoughts as he writes.