Lalla Rookh

THE day is lowering—stilly black

Sleeps the grim wave, while heaven's rack, Dispers'd and wild, 'twixt earth and sky Hangs like a shatter'd canopy!

There's not a cloud in that blue plain

But tells of storm to come or past; Here, flying loosely as the mane

Of a young war-horse in the blast; There, roll'd in masses dark and swelling, As proud to be the thunder's dwelling! While some, already burst and riven, Seem melting down the verge of heaven;

As though the infant storm had rent

The mighty womb that gave him birth,

And, having swept the firmament,

Was now in fierce career for earth.
On earth 'twas yet all calm around,
A pulseless silence, dread, profound,
More awful than the tempest's sound.
The diver steer'd for ORMUS' bowers,
And moor'd his skiff till calmer hours;

The sea-birds, with portentous screech,

Flew fast to land;

upon

the beach

The pilot oft had paus'd, with glance
Turn'd upward to that wild expanse;
And all was boding, drear and dark
As her own soul, when HINDA's bark
Went slowly from the Persian shore —
No music tim❜d her parting oar, '
Nor friends upon the lessening strand
Linger'd, to wave the unseen hand,
Or speak the farewel, heard no more ; —
But lone, unheeded, from the bay
The vessel takes its mournful way,
Like some ill-destin'd bark that steers
In silence through the Gate of Tears.2

And where was stern AL HASSAN then?
Could not that saintly scourge of men

"The Easterns used to set out on their longer voyages with music."

Harmer.

2 "The Gate of Tears, the straits or passage into the Red Sea, commonly called Babelmandel. It received this name from the old Arabians, on account of the danger of the navigation, and the number of shipwrecks by which it was distinguished; which induced them to consider as dead, and to wear mourning for all who had the boldness to hazard the passage through it into the Ethiopic ocean."- Richardson.

From blood-shed and devotion spare
One minute for a farewel there?

No close within, in changeful fits
Of cursing and of prayer, he sits
In savage loneliness to brood
Upon the coming night of blood,

With that keen, second-scent of death,
By which the vulture snuffs his food

In the still warm and living breath! 3 While o'er the wave his weeping daughter Is wafted from these scenes of slaughter, As a young bird of BABYLON,+

Let loose to tell of victory won,

Flies home, with wing, ah! not unstain'd
By the red hands that held her chain'd.

And does the long-left home she seeks
Light up no gladness on her cheeks?

The flowers she nurs'd- the well-known groves,
Where oft in dreams her spirit roves

3 "I have been told that whensoever an animal falls down dead, one or more vultures, unseen before, instantly appear."

- Pennant.

4" They fasten some writing to the wings of a Bagdat, or Babylonian pigeon." Travels of certain Englishmen:

Once more to see her dear gazelles
Come bounding with their silver bells;
Her birds' new plumage to behold,
And the gay, gleaming fishes count,
She left, all filletted with gold,

Shooting around their jasper fount.'

Her little garden mosque to see,

And once again, at evening hour, To tell her ruby rosary

In her own sweet acacia bower.

Can these delights, that wait her now,

Call

up no sunshine on her brow? No-silent, from her train apart, As if ev'n now she felt at heart

The chill of her approaching doom,
She sits, all lovely in her gloom
As a pale Angel of the Grave;

And o'er the wide, tempestuous wave,
Looks, with a shudder, to those towers,
Where, in a few short awful hours,

5 "The Empress of Jehan-Guire used to divert herself with feeding tame fish in her canals, some of which were many years afterwards known by fillets of gold, which she caused to be put round them." Harris.

Blood, blood, in steaming tides shall run,
Foul incense for to-morrow's sun!

"Where art thou, glorious stranger! thou,
"So lov'd, so lost, where art thou now?
"Foe Gheber infidel - whate'er

"Th' unhallow'd name thou'rt doom'd to bear,

"Still glorious still to this fond heart