Collected Poems - Sri Aurobindo Ashram

Khaled of the Sea 159
That to no alien house at the end has come
But winging goes as to its natural home.
The evening bird with no more simple flight
Reaches its one unfailing nest at night.
The heart which Fate not always here perverse
With the one possible home out of an universe,
Makes simply happy there secure shall dwell,
Feeling that to be there is only well.
And equal happy whether queenly chair
Her portion or she kneel loose-girdled there
And serve him as a slave. Alike ’tis heaven,
Rule or obedience to the one heart given.
So did not bright Zuleikha deem when she
The temple was of his idolatry.
Impatient of divine subjection, all
Love’s wealth was to her grace imperial
Purple and diadems and earth’s noblest gift
But vantage her disdainful pride to lift.
She was an Emir’s daughter and her sire
Clothed her in jewels and sublime attire,
From silver dishes fed and emerald
And in a world of delicate air installed
So that her nature with these costly things
Being burdened raised in vain its heavenward wings.
From Koraish and the Abbasside he drew
His stern extraction. Yet what brighter grew
About his formidable name accursed
Was a white fire of riches and the thirst
Of poor men gazing with a bitter stealth
On that impossibility of wealth.
“Abdullah the Emir,” so men would say
Drawing their rags about them, “has display
Of gold and silver and the sunlight fades
At noon in his wide treasury and the shades
Of midnight are more luminous there than birth
Of day upon the ordinary earth.
He has rich garments, would the naked clothe