Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE HAREEM, by RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE HAREEM, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Behind the veil, where depth is traced
Last Line: Amid the stains of evil days.
Alternate Author Name(s): Houghton, 1st Baron; Houghton, Lord
Subject(s): Harems; Women - Middle East


BEHIND the veil, where depth is traced
By many a complicated line, --
Behind the lattice closely laced
With filagree 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.

Husband and children round her draw
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.

If young and beautiful, she dwells
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 honour has her own,
And dreams not that the love she gives
Can be too much for him alone.

Within the gay kiosk reclined,
Above the scent of lemon groves,
Where bubbling fountains kiss the wind,
And birds make music to their loves, --
She lives a kind of faery life,
In sisterhood of fruits and flowers,
Unconscious of the outer strife,
That wears the palpitating hours.

And when maturer duties rise
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.

Thus in the ever-closed Hareem,
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.

Home of the East! thy threshold's edge
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.

There, though without he feels a slave,
Compelled another's will to scan,
Another's favour 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.

Then let the Moralist, who best
Honours 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.





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