Explore "The Captive" by Rudyard Kipling on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Not with an outcry to Allah nor any complaining / He answered his name at the muster and stood to the chaining. / When the twin anklets were nipped on the leg-bars that held them, / He brotherly greeted the armourers stooping to weld them. / Ere the sad dust of the marshalled feet of the chain-gang swallowed him, / Observing him nobly at ease, I alighted and followed him. / Thus we had speech by the way, but not touching his sorrow -- / Rather his red Yesterday and his regal To-morrow, / Wherein he statelily moved to the clink of his chains unregarded, / Nowise abashed but contented to drink of the potion awarded. / Saluting aloofly his Fate, he made swift with his story, / And the words of his mouth were as slaves spreading carpets of glory / Embroidered with names of the Djinns -- a miraculous weaving -- / But the cool and perspicuous eye overbore unbelieving. / So I submitted myself to the limits of rapture -- / Bound by this man we had bound, amid captives his capture -- / Till he returned me to earth and the visions departed. / But on him be the Peace and the Blessing; for he was great-hearted!