Sweden's Laureate: Selected Poems of Verner von Heidenstam/What Shall I Think?
WHAT SHALL I THINK?
When Mahmoud Khan, elated by the wineOf conquest, entered Sumnat's plundered shrine,—Where to the columns breaking the expanseOf swamps, illimitable, foul and dreary,His soldiers tied their chargers, battle-weary,And now drew lots for captured shield and lance,—Right against Shiva's giant image, toweringSternly, in shining silver all arrayed,With sixteen arms and one great eyeball glowering,He raised his famed and dreaded blade,—Evilest of sledgesThat the evilest smith(As the East alleges)E'er smote anvil with.
Inside the court, where the dim sun, declining,Shed spectral green on pool and colonnade,And fettered hounds with blood-stained whips were flayed,'Twas black with men save for their helmets' shining.Here cups and fans and dancers' robes were scattered;There amid laugh and shriek were women led,By ropes that cut their bare knees till they bled,Past elephants and captured idols, battered,With heads knocked off in one of the capricesFound in all minds of true barbarian mould, Mid drinking-vessels, too, of tarnished gold,And skins of Kashmir goats with silken fleeces.
A Brahmin grayTimidly stepped into the conqueror's way.His small head stuck absurdly outFrom his great cap with silver fringed aboutLike a potato from a silver cup.To Shiva's altar he advanced forthright,And, feverishly trembling, then spoke up:"Hurl in thy wrath, O Mahmoud Khan, to-nightMy body to the temple-river eels,But tell what thought at thy brown forehead's base isOf man, the thought that boundlessly disgracesAll manhood as thy nature it reveals!"
The chieftain smiled with aspect so appallingThat his own warriors hid their eyes beforeThe blow. Therewith they heard his weapon fallingWith hollow sound as on a dungeon door.Now sprang, when Shiva's form in twain was crumbled,Out of the cloven belly far and wideA rainbow fount of gems on every side,Where diamonds, sapphires, pearls, and mohurs tumbled.All of the temple's spoil, a very glutFrom rajah's harem and from peasant's hut,From widows and from orphans, there was gleamingIn open day before the robber horde. Like peas from an inverted basket streaming,The great pearls down the polished stairway poured.
So Mahmoud Khan smiled grimly once again,And to the gray old Brahmin answered then,While the old man so shook to see his pelfThat the eleven bells which fringed his vestTinkled with ruby tongues their tiny best:"When man's god is the priesthood's money-chest,What shall I think, forsooth, of man himself?"