The Return of the Druses by Robert Browning

_Enter_ DJABAL.

_Dja._ That a strong man should think himself a God! / I -- Hakeem? To have wandered through the world, / Sown falsehood, and thence reaped now scorn, now faith, / For my one chant with many a change, my tale / Of outrage, and my prayer for vengeance -- this / Required, forsooth, no mere man's faculty, / Naught less than Hakeem's? The persuading Loys / To pass probation here: the getting access / By Loys to the Prefect; worst of all, / The gaining my tribe's confidence by fraud / That would disgrace the very Frank, -- a few / Of Europe's secrets which subdue the flame, / The wave, -- to ply a simple tribe with these, / Took Hakeem? / And I feel this first to-day! / Does the day break, is the hour imminent / When one deed, when my whole life's deed, my deed / Must be accomplished? Hakeem? Why the God? / Shout, rather, "Djabal, Youssof's child, thought slain / With his whole race, the Druses' Sheikhs, this Prefect / Endeavored to extirpate -- saved, a child, / Returns from traversing the world, a man, / Able to take revenge, lead back the march / To Lebanon" -- so shout, and who gainsays? / But now, because delusion mixed itself / Insensibly with this career, all 's changed! / Have I brought Venice to afford us convoy? / "True -- but my jugglings wrought that! " Put I heart / Into our people where no heart lurked? -- "Ah, / What cannot an impostor do! " / Not this! / Not do this which I do! Not bid avaunt / Falsehood! Thou shalt not keep thy hold on me! / -- Nor even get a hold on me! 'T is now -- / This day -- hour -- minute -- 't is as here I stand / On the accursed threshold of the Prefect, / That I am found deceiving and deceived! / And now what do I? -- hasten to the few / Deceived, ere they deceive the many -- shout, / "As I professed, I did believe myself! / Say, Druses, had you seen a butchery -- / If Ayoob, Karshook saw -- -- Maani there / Must tell you how I saw my father sink; / My mother's arms twine still about my neck; / I hear my brother shriek, here's yet the scar / Of what was meant for my own death-blow -- say, / If you had woke like me, grown year by year / Out of the tumult in a far-off clime, / Would it be wondrous such delusion grew? / I walked the world, asked help at every hand; / Came help or no? Not this and this? Which helps / When I returned with, found the Prefect here, / The Druses here, all here but Hakeem's self, / The Khalif of the thousand prophecies, / Reserved for such a juncture, -- could I call / My mission aught but Hakeem's? Promised Hakeem / More than performs the Djabal -- you absolve? / -- Me, you will never shame before the crowd / Yet happily ignorant? -- Me, both throngs surround, / The few deceived, the many unabused, / -- Who, thus surrounded, slay for you and them / The Prefect, lead to Lebanon? No Khalif, / But Sheikh once more! Mere Djabal -- not"...