THE FIRE-WORSHIPPERS.

'TIS moonlight over OMAN'S SEA ;*
Her banks of pearl and palmy isles
Bask in the night-beam beauteously,

And her blue waters sleep in smiles.
'Tis moonlight in HARMOZIA'S † walls,
And through her EMIR'S porphyry halls,
Where, some hours since, was heard the swell
Of trumpet and the clash of zel,

Bidding the bright-eyed sun farewell;—
The peaceful sun, whom better suits

The music of the bulbul's nest,

Or the light touch of lovers' lutes,
To sing him to his golden rest.
All hushed-there's not a breeze in motion;
The shore is silent as the ocean.

If zephyrs come, so light they come,

Nor leaf is stirred nor wave is driven ;

*The Persian Gulf, sometimes so called, which separates the shores of Persia and Arabia.

The present Gombaroon, a town on the Persian side of the Gulf.

A Moorish instrument of music.

The wind-tower on the EMIR'S dome*
Can hardly win a breath from Heaven.

Ev'n he, that tyrant Arab, sleeps
Calm, while a nation round him weeps;
While curses load the air he breathes,
And falchions from unnumbered sheaths
Are starting to avenge the shame

His race hath brought on IRAN'S† name.
Hard, heartless Chief, unmoved alike

'Mid eyes that weep, and swords that strike;

One of that saintly, murderous brood,

To carnage and the Koran given, Who think through unbelievers' blood Lies their directest path to Heaven ;One, who will pause and kneel unshod

In the warm blood his hand hath poured,

*"At Gombaroon and other places in Persia, they have towers for the purpose of catching the wind, and cooling the houses."

Le Bruyn.

+"Iran is the true general name for the empire of Persia."Asiat. Res. Disc. 5.

To mutter o'er some text of God

Engraven on his reeking sword ;*-
Nay, who can coolly note the line,
The letter of those words divine,
To which his blade, with searching art,
Had sunk into its victim's heart!

Just ALLA! what must be thy look,

When such a wretch before thee stands Unblushing, with thy Sacred Book,—

Turning the leaves with blood-stained hands, And wresting from its page sublime His creed of lust, and hate, and crime ;Ev'n as those bees of TREBIZOND,

Which, from the sunniest flowers that glad With their pure smile the gardens round, Draw venom forth that drives men mad.†

Never did fierce ARABIA send

A satrap forth more direly great; Never was IRAN doomed to bend

Beneath a yoke of deadlier weight.

Her throne had fallen-her pride was crushed-
Her sons were willing slaves, nor blushed,
In their own land,-no more their own,-
To crouch beneath a stranger's throne.

*"On the blades of their scimitars some verse from the Koran is usually inscribed."-Russel.

There is a kind of Rhododendros about Trebizond, whose flowers the bee feeds upon, and the honey thence drives people mad." -Tournefort.

To second all such hearts can dare;
As he shall know, well, dearly know,
Who sleeps in moonlight luxury there,
Tranquil as if his spirit lay

Becalmed in Heaven's approving ray.
Sleep on for purer eyes than thine

Those waves are hushed, those planets shine;

Sleep on, and be thy rest unmoved

By the white moonbeam's dazzling power;— None but the loving and the loved

Should be awake at this sweet hour.

And see-where, high above those rocks
That o'er the deep their shadows fling,
Yon turret stands ;--where ebon locks,
As glossy as a heron's wing
Upon the turban of a king,*
Hang from the lattice, long and wild,—
'Tis she, that EMIR'S blooming child,
All truth and tenderness and grace,
Though born of such ungentle race;-
An image of Youth's radiant Fountain
Springing in a desolate mountain !†

O, what a pure and sacred thing
Is Beauty, curtained from the sight
Of the gross world, illumining

One only mansion with her light!
Unseen by man's disturbing eye,—

The flower that blooms beneath the sea,

Too deep for sunbeams, doth not lie

Hid in more chaste obscurity.

So, HINDA, have thy face and mind,

Like holy mysteries, lain enshrined.

"Their kings wear plumes of black herons' feathers upon the

right side as a badge of sovereignty."-Hanway.

"The Fountain of Youth, by a Mahometan tradition, is situ

ated in some dark region of the East."-Richardson.