Sweden's Laureate: Selected Poems of Verner von Heidenstam/The Mogul's Royal Ring
THE MOGUL'S ROYAL RING.
The Mogul's ring had been missingA hundred years and more.They sought it, never ceasing,They sought the city o'er.
To Hafed, then, the sweeper,The story came one day.He dropped his rubbish-barrelAnd left it where it lay."The barrel grows more heavyWith every year," he said."I'll seek the royal signetAnd set it on my head!"
With mattock, spade and pick-axeHe sought it day and night.Alas! the golden signet—He brought it ne'er to light.When round his house at sunriseHe stole with trembling legs,The crowd would come and pelt atHis back with rotten eggs.
He wept, he prayed, he dug still,But when at night he'd layHis turban by to bathe him,His youthful hair was gray.
Umballa, Hafed's brother, Lay meanwhile in the square,Sunned him like any other,And rubbed his shoulders there.He snored mid swarms of midges,He smiled to watch the fleas;He looked around and slapped, though,When gadflies came to tease.—He bought then for four coppersThe barrel, if you please.
The luckless folk who neared himWould hold their noses tight;The doors, as if they feared him,Would shut in sudden fright;The huckster's fruit all scuddedIn haste behind his bench:Because that barrel floodedThe quarter with its stench.
Outside the town he quicklyTurned upside down the thing.There lay, half-hid in sicklyOld cabbage-leaves, the ring!!
A hundred years 'twas missingDespite all search, and nowBehold! it crowned, caressing,Umballa's dusky brow.
Then through the horse-shoe gatewaysA festal throng poured out.
The baker,—who had nightySeen visions all about,Who dreamt he found the ring inThe middle of his dough,Nor ceased till through the windowThe morning sun would glow,—Left bread i' th' oven, sprang outAnd strewed with all his mightThe flour from his trough thereTill all the road was white.The smith, who erst had brooded,His hammer at his foot,So gladly smote the anvilThe air was thick with soot.The cloth-merchant, who mid pipe-smokeHad seemed so pale before,Now piled brocades and silks onHis beast in goodly store.He came and decked the barrelIn fig-leaf garlands green,Then laid on pearls and rubiesAnd cloth of richest sheen.And high thereon was borne,Mid kettle-drums a-thunder,Umballa, the Orient's wonder!
The victor, now, unableTo curb his pride, accostedHis brother, while a sableSlave with an ibis wing His shoes devoutly dusted;"Well, Hafed, where's the ring?"
Amid the joyful troop thenPale Hafed kneeled forthrightAnd pressed to earth his forehead,But now his hair was white.
He drove into his bosomHis long and crooked knife:"The ring you found mid rubbishI sought for with my life."
Since then good luck has neverDeceived Umballa's race.Are diamonds trumps, they everWill hold the diamond ace.
That Hafed, too, had offspringI freely may declare,Who, young, within my bibleNow lay my first gray hair.