Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Asia: Vols. XXI–XXIII. 1876–79.
The Fugitive
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)I can see the shining mane
Of his horse on the distant plain,
As he rides with his Cossack band!
Let thy proud heart relent;
Come back to my tall white tent,
Come back, my only son!
Cast thy hawks, when morning breaks,
On the swans of the Seven Lakes,
On the lakes of Karajal.
And pasture thy hunting steeds
In the long grass and the reeds
Of the meadows of Karaday.
Of softest leather made,
With choicest steel inlaid;
Will not all this prevail?”
Cast my hawks, when morning breaks,
On the swans of the Seven Lakes,
On the lakes of Karajal.
And pasture my hunting steeds
In the long grass and the reeds
Of the meadows of Karaday.
Of softest leather made,
With choicest steel inlaid,
All this cannot prevail.
To me, who am my own,
Who am slave to God alone,
And not to any man?
When I again shall be
By the blue, shallow sea,
Where the steel-bright sturgeons play.
In the barren wilderness,
On unknown hills no less
Will my companion be.
In the wind; when I watch at night
Like a hungry wolf, and am white
And covered with hoar-frost;
In the yellow desert sands,
In mountains or unknown lands,
Allah will care for me!”
Three hundred and sixty years
Had he lived in this land of tears,—
Bowed down and said, “O Khan!
There ’s no sap in dry grass,
No marrow in dry bones! alas,
The mind of old men is weak!
I have seen the primeval man,
I have seen the great Genghis Khan,
Arrayed in his robes of gold.
And I say to you, O Khan,
Pursue not the star-white man,
Pursue not the beautiful youth.
He brought him forth of the light,
At the verge and end of the night,
When men on the mountain prayed.
When abroad the angels walk;
He hath listened to their talk,
And he knoweth what they say.
Like the moon of Ramazan
When it shines in the skies, O Khan,
Is the light of his beautiful face.
The first words that he said
Were these, as he stood and prayed,
There is no God but God!
For Allah hath heard his prayer,
And the Archangel in the air,
Gabriel, hath said, Amen!”