Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Asia: Vols. XXI–XXIII. 1876–79.
The Hareem
By Richard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton (18091885)B
By many a complicated line,—
Behind the lattice closely laced
With filigree of choice design,—
Behind the lofty garden-wall,
Where stranger face can ne’er surprise,—
That inner world her all-in-all,
The Eastern Woman lives and dies.
The narrow circle where she rests;
His will the single perfect law,
That scarce with choice her mind molests;
Their birth and tutelage the ground
And meaning of her life on earth,—
She knows not elsewhere could be found
The measure of a woman’s worth.
An Idol in a secret shrine,
Where one high-priest alone dispels
The solitude of charms divine;
And in his happiness she lives,
And in his honor has her own,
And dreams not that the love she gives
Can be too much for him alone.
Above the scent of lemon groves,
Where bubbling fountains kiss the wind,
And birds make music to their loves,—
She lives a kind of fairy life,
In sisterhood of fruits and flowers,
Unconscious of the outer strife,
That wears the palpitating hours.
In pleasure’s and in passion’s place,
Her duteous loyalty supplies
The presence of departed grace:
So hopes she, by untiring truth,
To win the bliss to share with him
Those glories of celestial youth,
That time can never taint or dim.
As in the open Western home,
Sheds womanhood her starry gleam
Over our being’s busy foam;
Through latitudes of varying faith
Thus trace we still her mission sure,
To lighten life, to sweeten death,
And all for others to endure.
Checks the wild foot that knows no fear,
Yet shrinks, as if from sacrilege,
When rapine comes thy precincts near:
Existence, whose precarious thread
Hangs on the tyrant’s mood and nod,
Beneath thy roof its anxious head
Rests as within the house of God.
Compelled another’s will to scan,
Another’s favor forced to crave,—
There is the subject still the man:
There is the form that none but he
Can touch,—the face that he alone
Of living men has right to see;
Not he who fills the Prophet’s throne.
Honors the female heart, that blends
The deep affections of the West
With thought of life’s sublimest ends,
Ne’er to the Eastern home deny
Its lesser, yet not humble praise,
To guard one pure humanity
Amid the stains of evil days.