At the Tomb of Abel

In the fair bloom-burst of the Syrian spring,
As Allah's buckler, the irradiant sun,
Behind the crest of Anti-Lebanon
In majesty was slowly westering,
Through oleanders and through tangled thyme
By a sharp slope we set our feet to climb
To where, so runs the ancient Arab tale,
Cumbered with centuries of dust and grime,
Hangs Abel's tomb above the mountain vale.

We waded poppy shallows; saw the breeze
Make sanguine waves of the anemones;
And in the faint green orchard aisles below
Beheld the almonds spraying into snow;
And ever, as we rose, descried afar
Peaks, hued with violet and cinnabar
And purple, — dyes imperial for dower;
Now did the lovely lupin lure, and then
Were we enraptured by the cyclamen
That from some cranny thrust its fragile flower.

So up and up we clambered, and the air
Grew amethystine, like the wondrous wine
Crushed from Zantean grapes in vineyards where
They blush above the blue Aegean brine.
Forgot was every hyssop-saffroned shrine, —
The riot of the roses of Fayûm,
The revel of the Jordan's pleachèd greens,
The glamoured gardens of the Damascenes,
Amid this lavish opulence of bloom.
And still went with us from the tuneful throat
Of Barada the ear-enthralling note
The olden Greeks called golden; while the groves
About it flung along our tortuous trail
The heavenly voice that through the gloaming roves,—
The seraph song-speech of the nightingale.

At last we won to steps deep-hewn in stone,
Eaten by lichens, and by moss o'ergrown;
And, having scaled the topmost, saw a small
Dome-fragment pendant from a topling wall
Draped with fantastic relics,—cloths whose stain
Was bleached by burning suns and dimmed by rain.
Beneath the wall a melancholy mass
Of ruin lay, sparse-sown with wilding grass
Wherethrough the lizards rustled, changing hue
With every shift of shape; now steely blue;
Now ashen as an ancient olive bole;
Now, in the sun-flame, glowing like a coal.

Anigh the tomb in silence we reclined,
While from the west a wafture of soft wind
Caressed us soothingly: afar, below;
In gathering gloaming spread the green plateau
Wherefrom we had ascended. Though our mood
Had been elation, soon the solitude,—
The thought of the first tragedy of earth,—
Banished our buoyance. Then a note of mirth
Rose as a bird-song rises when the dawn
Bursts into blossom, and the night is gone.
And 'neath us o'er the flower-besprinkled space
A youth strode, lilting with alluring grace
An Arab ditty such as wooers breathe
When Love's clear planet, at the shut of eve,
Across the wastes of desert flings its spell,
And maidens gather round about the well.

He seemed a part of the year's bourgeoning;
Human, yet having all that makes the spring
Take hold on the affections;—blithesomeness,
Beauty of form that through his shepherd's dress
Shone, and a vigor in his step and swing
Faun-like and passional. His cloak hung free;
One bare arm timed a ditty's dips and stops,
Waving a crook wherewith, half dreamily,
He swinged the grasses and the blossom-tops.
And so we watched him through the closing shade,
Along the pathway dipping toward the glade
Pass whitherward his grazing flock had strayed,
E'en as did Abel long aforetime, fain
Of all life's rapture, ere the stroke of Cain.

Cain!—on our minds again, despite the song,
There fell the shadow of the world's first wrong;
And lo, the while we marked the perfect poise
Of that elastic figure,—very joy's
Embodiment and portraiture,— our gaze
Was horror-smitten, deadened to a daze,
For we beheld a dark form, leopard-like,
(Grim murder, lurking in a copse's maze,)
Behind the shepherd crouch, and spring and strike!
The song that soared ecstatic to the sky
Turned, on the instant, to a strangled cry.
The braided bough-crests at the valley's verge
Gaped, and then mingled in a crashing surge
Of shuddering leafage, while the copse again
Shut from our sight the treacherous son of Cain.

Then sudden dipped the sun, and, clutched by gloom,
Downward we plunged from Abel's crumbling tomb.