Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SAADABAD, by JAMES ELROY FLECKER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SAADABAD, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Let us deal kindly with a heart of old by sorrow torn
Last Line: Or remember how his poet took a girl to saadabad?
Subject(s): Turkey


I

Let us deal kindly with a heart of old by sorrow torn:
Come with Nedim to Saadabad, my love, this silver morn:
I hear the boatmen singing from our caique on the Horn,
Waving cypress, waving cypress, let us go to Saadabad!

We shall watch the Sultan's fountains ripple, rumble, splash and rise
Over terraces of marble, under the blue balconies,
Leaping through the plaster dragon's hollow mouth and empty eyes:
Waving cypress, waving cypress, let us go to Saadabad.

Lie a little to your mother: tell her you must out to pray,
And we'll slink along the alleys, thieves of all a summer day,
Down to the worn old watersteps, and then, my love, away:
O my cypress, waving cypress, let us go to Saadabad.

You and I, and with us only some poor lover in a dream:
I and you -- perhaps one minstrel who will sing beside the stream.
Ah Nedim will be the minstrel, and the lover be Nedim,
Waving cypress, waving cypress, when we go to Saadabad!

II

Down the Horn Constantinople fades and flashes in the blue,
Rose of cities dropping with the heavy summer's burning dew,
Fading now as falls the Orient evening round the sky and you,
Fading into red and silver as we row to Saadabad.

Banish then, O Grecian eyes, the passion of the waiting West!
Shall God's holy monks not enter on a day God knoweth best
To crown the Roman king again, and hang a cross upon his breast?
Daughter of the Golden Islands, come away to Saadabad.

And a thousand swinging steeples shall begin as they began
When Heraclius rode home from the wrack of Ispahan,
Naked captives pulled behind him, double eagles in the van --
But is that a tale for lovers on the way to Saadabad?

Rather now shall you remember how of old two such as we,
You like her the laughing mistress of a poet, him or me,
Came to find the flowery lawns that give the soul tranquillity:
Let the boatmen row no longer -- for we land at Saadabad.

See you not that moon-dim caique with the lovers at the prow,
Straining eyes and aching lips, and touching hands as we do now,
See you not the turbaned shadows passing, whence? and moving, how?
Are the ghosts of all the Moslems floating down to Saadabad?

* * *

Broken fountains, phantom waters, nevermore to glide and gleam
From the dragon-mouth in plaster sung of old by old Nedim,
Beautiful and broken fountains, keep you still your Sultan's dream,
Or remember how his poet took a girl to Saadabad?





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