A wish to be buried under a grapevine sounds like a drinker's joke, and Eugene Field lets it begin as one. Abu Midjan asks that the vine's "juices, red and blithe" may "cheer these thirsty bones of mine", as if even a skeleton deserves a drink. The joke turns dangerous quickly. The "Prophet-Chief" takes it as an insult to faith and sentences the singer to die "in chains." Then a fellow prisoner, a Christian slave, quietly promises to plant the vine. The last stanza reports that a vine grew, and that no one knows where the man who planted it lies. The central idea is that the truest loyalty often goes unrecorded. The vine is visible, "with purpling fruit," while the person who made it grow disappears.
The form suits the story. Five quatrains rhyme ABAB, mostly in brisk iambic tetrameter, so the poem moves like a fable or ballad, one step per stanza: the wish, the song, the sentence, the promise, the outcome. Several rhymes carry meaning. In the first stanza "scythe" pairs with "blithe," setting death beside gladness. In the fourth, "saith" rhymes with "death," so the slave's promise is tied to the grave in sound as well as sense. In the last stanza "grave" and "slave" chime together, binding the two men, while "grows" and "knows" set what can be seen against what can't.
The poem also has small cracks in its smooth surface. "That brings that--vinous grace to me!" is the one line where the rhythm stumbles. The dash reads like a pause, a smack of the lips before the pleasure word arrives. The word "grace" itself is churchy, borrowed from religion and applied to wine, which suggests why the Prophet-Chief is offended. The poem also mixes its worlds. Father Time swinging his scythe is a European figure, dropped into a tale of Saracens and a Prophet, which gives the poem the feel of a Western storyteller imagining the East. Words like "saith," "Lo," "'neath" and "Elsewise" add a storybook antiquity.
Stanza three is where the poem is coolest and most ironic. The decree piles up its insults, "curst of Allah, loathed of men", with the heavy ring of official language. The rest of the poem shows how little power such words have against a plant and a promise. Notice, too, how the Christian is labelled. In stanza four he is "one vile Christian slave," a phrase that sounds as if it comes from the Prophet-Chief's side of the wall. By the last stanza he is "the martyred Christian slave." The label changes once we have seen what he did.
The ending turns on a pair of verbs: the vine "grows," the slave "rots." The red of stanza one returns as "purpling fruit," so Abu Midjan's wish comes true in an odd and earthy way. His body feeds the vine, and his bones do finally drink. The man who made it possible gets no marker and no fruit. The line "Allah, and only Allah, knows!" is a generous place to end. The slave's resting place is entrusted to the very God invoked in the sentence against Abu Midjan, so neither faith is mocked. Ordinary memory has failed him, and divine memory is all that is left.
What makes the poem worth reading is how much it fits into twenty lines. It has a rebel's wit, a cruel sentence, a promise made between enemies, and a final twist that favors the unnamed over the named. Field is better known for children's verse such as "Little Boy Blue," so this wry, ballad-like piece shows a different mood. It suggests that a kind act across a religious divide can outlast the decree that tried to prevent it, even if the person who did it is never remembered.