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Translated by J. C. Mangan
FILL up with bright palm-wine, unto the rim fill up | |
| The cloven ostrich-eggshell cup, | |
| And don your shells and cowries, ye sultanas! | |
| O, choose your gayest, gorgeousest array, | |
| As on the brilliant Beiram holiday | 5 |
| That opes the doors of your Zenaunas! | |
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| Come! never sit a-trembling on your silk deewaums! | |
| What fear ye? To your feet, ye timid fawns! | |
| See here your zones embossed with gems and amber! | |
| See here the firebright beads of coral for your necks! | 10 |
| In such a festal time each young sultana decks | |
| Herself as for the nuptial-chamber. | |
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| Rejoice!—your lord, your king, comes home again! | |
| His enemies lie slaughtered on the desert-plain. | |
| Rejoice!—it cost you tears of blood to sever | 15 |
| From one you loved so well,—but now your griefs are o’er: | |
| Sing! dance! He leaves his land, his house, no more,— | |
| Henceforward he is yours forever! | |
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| Triumphant he returns: naught seeks he now; his hand | |
| No more need hurl the javelin: sea and sand and land | 20 |
| Are his, far as the Zaire’s blue billows wander; | |
| Henceforth he bids farewell to spear and battle-horse, | |
| And calls you to his couch,—a cold one, for his corse | |
| Lies on the copper buckler yonder! | |
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| Nay, fill not thus the harem with your shrieks! | 25 |
| ’T is he! Behold his cloak, striped, quagga-like, with bloody streaks! | |
| ’T is he! albeit his eyes lie glazed forever under | |
| Their lids, albeit his blood no more shall dance along | |
| In rapture to the music of the tomtom-gong, | |
| Or headlong war-steed’s hoof of thunder! | 30 |
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| Yes! the Great Buffalo sleeps! His mightiest victory was his last. | |
| His warriors howl in vain,—his necromancers gaze aghast,— | |
| Fetish, nor magic wand, nor amulet of darnel, | |
| Can charm back life to the clay-cold heart and limb. | |
| He sleeps, and you, his women, sleep with him! | 35 |
| You share the dark pomps of his charnel! | |
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| Even now the headsman whets his axe to slay you at the funeral-feast. | |
| Courage! a glorious fate is yours! Through Afric and the East | |
| Your fame shall be immortal! Kordofán and Yemen | |
| With stories of your lord’s exploits and your devotedness shall ring, | 40 |
| And future ages rear skull-obelisks to the King | |
| Of Congo and his Hundred Women! | |
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