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Updated: June 14, 2025
The problem of the poem "Nourhalma" ... was explained, ... he had designed it when he had played his part on the stage of life as Sah-luma, and perhaps not even then for the first time!
"NOURHALMA!" ... it had a soft sound ... it seemed to breathe of Eastern languor and love-singing, it was surely the best title he could have.
"Nourhalma!" O memory! ... slow-filtering, reluctant memory! ... why, why was his brain thus tortured with these conflicting pang, of piteous recollection!
"Write " said he slowly.. "write first the title of my poem thus: 'Nourhalma: A Love-Legend of the Past." There was a pause, during which the pen of Zabastes traveled quickly over the papyrus for a moment, then stopped.
"Doesn't it!" exclaimed Villiers, delighted "I had it copied from a first edition of Petrarca which happens to be in my collection. This specimen of 'Nourhalma' has become valuable and unique. It was published at ten-and-six, and can't be got anywhere under five or six guineas, if for that. Of course a copy of each edition has been set aside for YOU."
Straightway deciding thereon, he wrote it clearly at the top of the first page, thus: "Nourhalma; A Love Legend of the Past," ... then turning to the end, he signed his own name with a bold flourish, thus attesting his indisputable right to the authorship of what was not only destined to be the most famous poetical masterpiece of the day, but was also to prove the most astonishing, complex, and humiliating problem ever suggested to his brain.
And perchance it will not be considered out of my line of duty if I venture to remind my most illustrious and renowned MASTER " this with a withering sneer, "that if he has any more remarkable nothings to dictate concerning this particularly inane creation of his fancy 'Nourhalma, 'twill be well that we should proceed therewith, for the hours wax late and the sun veereth toward his House of Noon."
Presently, about the end of the second column, I came to the assertion that 'the posthumous poem of "Nourhalma" must be admitted as one of the most glorious productions in the English language. This woke me up considerably, and I read on, groping my way through all sorts of wordy phrases and used-up arguments, till my mind gradually grasped the fact that the critic of the Parthenon had evidently never heard of Theos Alwyn before, and being astonished, and perhaps perplexed, by the original beauty and glowing style of 'Nourhalma, had jumped, without warrant, to the conclusion that its author must be dead.
"It wasn't MY doing," said Villiers at last, when he could control himself a little, "and even now I don't in the least know how the misconception arose! 'Nourhalma' was published, according to your instructions, as rapidly as it could be got through the press, and I had no preliminary 'puffs' or announcements of any kind circulated in the papers.
Well, well! ... after all, Nourhalma WAS a posthumous work, it had been written before, ages since, when he, as Sah-luma, had perished ere he had had time to give it to the world!
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