Oh! he would rather houseless roam Where freedom and his God may lead, Than be the sleekest slave at home That crouches to the conqueror's creed!

Is Iran's pride then gone for ever, Quench'd with the flame in Mithra's caves?

No-she has sons that never-never-
Will stoop to be the Moslem's slaves,
While heaven has light or earth has
graves.

Spirits of fire, that brood not long,
But flash resentment back for wrong;
And hearts where, slow but deep, the
seeds

Of vengeance ripen into deeds,
Till, in some treacherous hour of calm,
They burst, like Zeilan's giant palm,1
Whose buds fly open with a sound
That shakes the pigmy forests round!

Is one of many, brave as he,
Who loathe thy haughty race and thee;
Who, though they know the strife is
vain,

Who, though they know the riven chain
Snaps but to enter in the heart
Of him who rends its links apart,
Yet dare the issue,--blest to be
Even for one bleeding moment free,
And die in pangs of liberty!
Thou know'st them well-'tis some
moons since

Thy turban'd troops and blood-red
flags,

Thou satrap of a bigot prince!
Have swarm'd among these Green

Sea crags;

Yet here, even here, a sacred band, Ay, in the portal of that land

The Talpot or Talipot tree. "This beautiful palm-tree, which grows in the heart of the forests, may be classed among the loftiest trees, and becomes still higher when on the point of bursting forth from its leafy summit. The sheath which then envelopes the flower is very large,

Thou, Arab, dar'st to call thy own, Their spears across thy path have thrown;

Here-ere the winds half wing'd thee o'er

Rebellion braved thee from the shore.

Rebellion! foul, dishonouring word,

Whose wrongful blight so oft has stain'd

The holiest cause that tongue or sword
Of mortal ever lost or gain'd.
How many a spirit, born to bless,

Hath sunk beneath that withering

name,

Whom but a day's, an hour's success
Had wafted to eternal fame !
As exhalations, when they burst
From the warm earth, if chill'd at first,
If check'd in soaring from the plain,
Darken to fogs and sink again ;—
But, if they once triumphant spread
Their wings above the mountain-head
And turn to sun-bright glories there!
Become enthroned in upper air,

And who is he, that wields the might
Of freedom on the Green Sea brink,
Before whose sabre's dazzling light?

The eyes of Yemen's warriors wink. Who comes embower'd in the spears Of Kerman's hardy mountaineers :— Those mountaineers, that truest, last

Cling to their country's ancient rites, As if that God, whose eyelids cast Their closing gleams on Iran's heights,

Among her snowy mountains threw
The last light of his worship too!

'Tis Hafed- -name of fear, whose sound

Chills like the muttering of a charm;Shout but that awful name around,

And palsy shakes the manliest arm. 'Tis Hafed, most accurst and dire (So rank'd by Moslem hate and ire) Of all the rebel Sons of Fire!

and when it bursts, makes an explosion like the report of a cannon.'-Thunberg.

Before whose sabre's dazzling light.-'When the bright cimiters make the eyes of our heroes wink.'-The Moallakat's Poems of Amru.

Of whose malign, tremendous power
The Arabs, at their mid-watch hour,
Such tales of fearful wonder tell,
That each affrighted sentinel
Pulls down his cowl upon his eyes,
Lest Hafed in the midst should rise!
A man, they say, of monstrous birth,
A mingled race of flame and earth,
Sprung from those old, enchanted
kings,1

Who, in their fairy helms, of yore, A feather from the mystic wings

Of the Simoorgh resistless wore ; And gifted by the Fiends of Fire, Who groan'd to see their shrines expire, With charms that, all in vain withstood, Would drown the Koran's light in blood!

Such were the tales that won belief,

And such the colouring fancy gave To a young, warm, and dauntless Chief,

One who, no more than mortal brave, Fought for the land his soul adored, For happy homes, and altars free,His only talisman, the sword,

His only spell-word, Liberty! One of that ancient hero line, Along whose glorious current shine Names that have sanctified their blood;

As Lebanon's small mountain flood Is render'd holy by the ranks Of sainted cedars on its banks !3 'Twas not for him to crouch the knee Tamely to Moslem tyranny ;'Twas not for him, whose soul was cast In the bright mould of ages past,

1 Tahmuras, and other ancient kings of Persia; whose adventures in Fairy-Land, among the Peris and Dives, may be found in Richardson's curious Dissertation. The griffin Simoorgh, they Jay, took some feathers from her breast for Tahmuras, with which he adorned his helmet, and transmitted them afterwards to his descendants.

2 This rivulet, says Dandini, is called the Holy River from the cedar-saints' among which it rises.

3 Is rendered holy by the ranks.-In the LetIres Edifiantes, there is a different cause assigned for its name of holy. In these are deep caverns, which formerly served as so many cells for a great number of recluses, who had chosen these retreats as the only witnesses upon carth of the severity of their penance. The tears of these

Whose melancholy spirit, fed
With all the glories of the dead,
Though framed for Iran's happiest
years,

Was born among her chains and tears!

'Twas not for him to swell the crowd
Of slavish heads, that shrinking bow'd
Before the Moslem, as he pass'd,
Like shrubs beneath the poison-blast-
No- far he fled-indignant fled

The pageant of his country's shame; While every tear her children shed Fell on his soul, like drops of flame And, as a lover hails the dawn

Of a first smile, so welcomed he
The sparkle of the first sword drawn
For vengeance and for liberty!
But vain was valour-vain the flower
Of Kerman, in that deathful hour,
Against Al Hassan's whelming power.~
In vain they met him, helm to helm,
He came in bigot pomp to sway,
Upon the threshold of that realm
And with their corpses block'd his
way--

In vain - for every lance they raised,
Thousands around the conqueror blazed
For every arm that lined their shore,
Myriads of slaves were wafted o`er, -
A bloody, bold, and countless crowd,
Before whose swarm as fast they bow'
As dates beneath the locust-cloud !
There stood--but one short league away
From old Harmozia's sultry bay-
A rocky mountain, o'er the Sea
Of Oman beetling awfully.

pious penitents gave the river of which we have just treated the name of the Holy River.' Vide Chateaubriand's Beauties of Christianity.

This mountain is my own creation, as the stupendous chain' of which I suppose it a link does not extend quite so far as the shores of the Persian Gulf. This long and lofty range of mountains formerly divided Media from Assyria, and now forms the boundary of the Persian and Turkish empires. It runs parallel with the river Tigris and Persian Gulf, and almost disappearing in the vicinity of Gomberoon (Harmozia) seems once more to rise in the southern districts of Kerman, and following an easterly course through the centre of Meckraun and Balouchistan, is entirely lost in the deserts of Sinde.'-Kinneir's Persian Empire.

A last and solitary link

Of those stupendous chains that reach From the broad Caspian's reedy brink Down winding to the Green Sea beach. Around its base the bare rocks stood, Like naked giants, in the flood,

As if to guard the gulf across; While, on its peak, that braved the sky, A ruin'd temple tower'd, so high

That oft the sleeping albatross1 Struck the wild ruins with her wing, And from her cloud-rock'd slumbering Started to find man's dwelling there In her own silent fields of air! Beneath, terrific caverns gave Dark welcome to each stormy wave That dash'd, like midnight revellers,

in ;

And such the strange, mysterious din At times throughout those caverns roll'd,

And such the fearful wonders told
Of restless sprites imprison'd there,
That bold were Moslem, who would
dare, 2

At twilight hour, to steer his skiff
Beneath the Gheber's lonely cliff.

On the land side, those towers sublime,
That seem'd above the grasp of Time,
Were sever'd from the haunts of men
By a wide, deep, and wizard glen,
So fathomless, so full of gloom,

No eye could pierce the void be-
tween ;

It seem'd a place where Gholes might

That bold were Moslem, who would dare, At twilight hour, to steer his skiff Beneath the Gheber's lonely cliff.

Too deep for eye or ear to know
If 'twere the sea's imprison'd flow,

Or floods of ever-restless flame.
For each ravine, each rocky spire,
Of that vast mountain stood on fire;
And, though for ever past the days,
When God was worshipp'd in the blaze
That from its lofty altar shone,-
Though fled the priests, the votaries
gone,

Still did the mighty flame burn on1 Through chance and change, through good and ill,

Like its own God's eternal will,
Deep, constant, bright, unquenchable!

Thither the vanquished Hafed led

His little army's last remains ;'Welcome, terrific glen !' he said, Thy gloom, that Eblis' self might dread,

Is heaven to him who flies from chains!

O'er a dark, narrow bridgeway, known To him and to his chiefs alone,

They cross'd the chasm and gain'd the

towers ;

'This home,' he cried, at least is

ours

Here we may bleed, unmock'd by hymns

Of Moslem triumph o'er our head; Here we may fall, nor leave our limbs To quiver to the Moslem's tread. Stretch'd on this rock, while vultures' beaks

Are whetted on our yet warm cheeks, Here-happy that no tyrant's eye Gloats on our torments-we may die!' 'Twas night when to those towers they

came,

And gloomily the fitful flame,

those who essayed in former days to ascend or explore it.'-Pottinger's Beloochistan.

The Ghebers generally built their temples over subterraneous fires.

Like lutes of angels, touch'd so near Hell's confines, that the damn'd can hear?

Collecting all the heart's sweet ties
Into one knot of happiness!
No, Hinda, no-thy fatal flame
Is nursed in silence, sorrow, shame,—

A passion, without hope or pleasure, In thy soul's darkness buried deep,

It lies, like some ill-gotten treasure,—

ness,

She now has but the one dear thought, And thinks that o'er, almost to madness!

Oft doth her sinking heart recall
His words-for my sake weep for all;'
And bitterly, as day on day

Of rebel carnage fast succeeds,
She weeps a lover snatch'd away
In every Gheber wretch that bleeds.
There's not a sabre meets her eye,
But with his life-blood seems to
swim ;

There's not an arrow wings the sky,

But fancy turns its point to him. No more she brings with footstep light Al Hassan's falchion for the fight; And, had he look'd with clearer sight, Had not the mists, that ever rise

From a foul spirit, dimm'd his eyes, He would have mark'd her shuddering frame,

When from the field of blood he came, The faltering speech - the look estrangedVoice, step, and life, and beauty changed

1 The Persian lily shines and towers -' A virid verdure succeeds the autumnal rains, and the ploughed fields are covered with the Persian lily, of a resplendent vellow colour.'-Russel's Aleppo.

O'er which its pale-eyed votaries keep Unholy watch, while others sleep! Seven nights have darken'd Oman's Sea, Since last, beneath the moonlight ray, She saw his light oar rapidly

Hurry her Gheber's bark away, And still she goes, at midnight hour, To weep alone in that high bower, And watch, and look along the deep For him whose smiles first made her

weep, —

But watching, weeping, all was vain,
She never saw his bark again.
The owlet's solitary cry,

The night-hawk, flitting darkly by,

And oft the hateful carrion bird, Which reek'd with that day's banquetHeavily flapping his clogg'd wing, ing

Was all she saw, was all she heard. 'Tis the eighth morn-Al Hassan's brow Is brightened with unusual joyWhat mighty mischief glads him now,

Who never smiles but to destroy? The sparkle upon Herkend's Sea, When toss'd at midnight furiously, Tells not of wreck and ruin nigh, More surely than that smiling eye!

2 It is observed, with respect to the Sea of Herkend, that when it is tossed by tempestuous winds, it sparkles like fire.'-Travels of Two Mohammedang,