Explore "Behram and Eddetma" by Madison Cawein on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
/ Against each prince now she had held her own, / An easy victor for the seven years / O'er kings and sons of kings; Eddetma, she / Who, when much sought in marriage, hating men, / Espoused their ways to win beyond their worth / Through martial exercise and hero deeds: / She, who accomplished in all warlike arts, / Let cry through every kingdom of the kings: -- / "Eddetma weds with none but him who proves / Himself her master in the push of arms, / Her suitor's foeman she. And he who fails, / So overcome of woman, woman-scorned, / Disarmed, dishonored, yet shall he depart, / Brow-bearing, forehead-stigmatized with fire, / 'Behold, a freedman of Eddetma this. ' / Let cry, and many princes put to shame, / Pretentious courtiers small in thew and thigh, / Proud-palanquined from principalities / Of Irak and of Hind and farther Sind. / Though she was queenly as that Empress of / The proud Amalekites, Tedmureh, and / More beautiful, yet she had held her own.
/ To Behram of the Territories, one / Son of a Persian monarch swaying kings, / Came bruit of her and her noised victories, / Her maiden beauty and her warrior strength; / Eastward he journeyed from his father's court, / With men and steeds and store of wealth and arms, / To the rich city where her father reigned, / Its seven citadels by Seven Seas. / And messengered the monarch with a gift / Of savage vessels wroughten out of gold, / Of foreign fabrics stiff with gems and gold. / Vizier-ambassadored the old king gave / His answer to the suitor: -- "I, my son, / What grace have I above the grace of God? / What power is mine but a material? / What rule have I unto the substanceless? / Me, than the shadow of the Prophet's shade / Less, God invests with power but of man; / Man! and the right beyond man's right is God's; / His the dominion of the secret soul -- / And His her soul! Now hath my daughter sworn, / By all her vestal soul, that none shall know / Her but her better in the listed field, / Determining spear and sword. -- Grant Fate thy trust; / She hangs her hand upon to-morrow's joust, / A prize to win. -- My greeting and farewell."