Sweden's Laureate: Selected Poems of Verner von Heidenstam/The Mogul's Royal Ring

by Carl Gustaf Verner von Heidenstam

THE MOGUL'S ROYAL RING.

The Mogul's ring had been missing
A 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-barrel
And left it where it lay.
"The barrel grows more heavy
With every year," he said.
"I'll seek the royal signet
And set it on my head!"

With mattock, spade and pick-axe
He sought it day and night.
Alas! the golden signet—
He brought it ne'er to light.
When round his house at sunrise
He stole with trembling legs,
The crowd would come and pelt at
His back with rotten eggs.

He wept, he prayed, he dug still,
But when at night he'd lay
His 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 coppers
The barrel, if you please.

The luckless folk who neared him
Would hold their noses tight;
The doors, as if they feared him,
Would shut in sudden fright;
The huckster's fruit all scudded
In haste behind his bench:
Because that barrel flooded
The quarter with its stench.

Outside the town he quickly
Turned upside down the thing.
There lay, half-hid in sickly
Old cabbage-leaves, the ring!!

A hundred years 'twas missing
Despite all search, and now
Behold! it crowned, caressing,
Umballa's dusky brow.

Then through the horse-shoe gateways
A festal throng poured out.

The baker,—who had nighty
Seen visions all about,
Who dreamt he found the ring in
The middle of his dough,
Nor ceased till through the window
The morning sun would glow,—
Left bread i' th' oven, sprang out
And strewed with all his might
The flour from his trough there
Till all the road was white.
The smith, who erst had brooded,
His hammer at his foot,
So gladly smote the anvil
The air was thick with soot.
The cloth-merchant, who mid pipe-smoke
Had seemed so pale before,
Now piled brocades and silks on
His beast in goodly store.
He came and decked the barrel
In fig-leaf garlands green,
Then laid on pearls and rubies
And cloth of richest sheen.
And high thereon was borne,
Mid kettle-drums a-thunder,
Umballa, the Orient's wonder!

The victor, now, unable
To curb his pride, accosted
His brother, while a sable
Slave with an ibis wing
His shoes devoutly dusted;
"Well, Hafed, where's the ring?"

Amid the joyful troop then
Pale Hafed kneeled forthright
And pressed to earth his forehead,
But now his hair was white.

He drove into his bosom
His long and crooked knife:
"The ring you found mid rubbish
I sought for with my life."

Since then good luck has never
Deceived Umballa's race.
Are diamonds trumps, they ever
Will hold the diamond ace.

That Hafed, too, had offspring
I freely may declare,
Who, young, within my bible
Now lay my first gray hair.