Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900.

By James BerryBensel

1451 Ahmed

WITH wrath-flushed cheeks, and eyelids red

Where anger’s fiercest sign was spread,

And hands whose clenched nails left their print

In the brown palm’s deep, sun-warmed tint,

The chieftains sate in circle wide,

And in the centre, on his side,

Thrown like a dog, a thieving brute,

Lay Ahmed, frowning, bound and mute.

“The man who takes an offered bribe

From chieftain of an alien tribe

Shall die.” So ran the Arab law,

Read by a scribe; and Ahmed saw

In every eye that scanned his face

Burn the hot fury of his race.

His fate was told. All men must die

Some time: what cared he how or why?

They loosed his tight-swathed arms and feet,

Unwound the cashmere turban, sweet

With spice and attar, stripped the vest

Of gold and crimson from his breast,

And laid his broad, brown bosom bare

To scimeter and desert air.

He stood as moulded statues stand,

With sightless eye and nerveless hand:

As moulded statues stand, but through

The dark skin, at each breath he drew,

The wild heart’s wilder beating showed.

Then on the sand he kneeled, and bowed

His head to meet the ready stroke;

The headsman threw aside his cloak,

The curved steel circled in the sun—

Ahmed was dead, and justice done.