THE day is lowering - stilly black
Sleeps the grim wave, while heaven's rack,
Dispersed and wild, 'twixt earth and sky
Hangs like a shattered 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, rolled 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 't was yet all calm around, A pulseless silence, dread, profound, More awful than the tempest's sound. The diver steered for ORMUS' bowers, And moored his skiff till calmer hours; The sea-birds, with portentous screech, Flew fast to land;

· upon

the beach

Turned 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 timed her parting oar,270

Nor friends upon the lessening strand
Lingered, to wave the unseen hand,
Or speak the farewell, heard no more;
But lone, unheeded, from the bay
The vessel takes its mournful way,
Like some ill-destined bark that steers
In silence through the Gate of Tears.271
And where was stern AL HASSAN then?
Could not that saintly scourge of men
From bloodshed and devotion spare
One minute for a farewell 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! 272 While o'er the wave his weeping daughter Is wafted from these scenes of slaughter, As a young bird of BABYLON,278

Let loose to tell of victory won,

Flies home, with wing, ah! not unstained By the red hands that held her chained.

And does the long-left home she seeks
Light up no gladness on her cheeks?
The flowers she nursed-the well-known groves,
Where oft in dreams her spirit roves
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 filleted with gold,

Shooting around their jasper fount; 274
Her little garden mosque to see,
And once again, at evening hour,
To tell her ruby rosary

275

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

"Where art thou, glorious stranger! thou,
"So loved, so lost, where art thou now?

"Foe Gheber - infidel - whate'er

"Th' unhallowed name thou 'rt doomed to bear,

"Still glorious

still to this fond heart

"Dear as its blood, whate'er thou art!
"Yes ALLA, dreadful ALLA! yes
"If there be wrong, be crime in this,
"Let the black waves that round us roll,
"Whelm me this instant, ere my soul,
home
Forgetting faith
"Before its earthly idol fall,

66

- father all

"Nor worship e'en Thyself above him"For, oh, so wildly do I love him,

"Thy Paradise itself were dim

"And joyless, if not shared with him!"

Her hands were clasped

her eyes upturned,

Dropping their tears like moonlight rain ; And, though her lip, fond raver! burned With words of passion, bold, profane, Yet was there light around her brow, A holiness in those dark eyes,

Which showed, though wand'ring earthward :
Her spirit's home was in the skies.

Yes for a spirit pure as hers
Is always pure, e'en while it errs;
As sunshine, broken in the rill,
Though turned astray, is sunshine still!

So wholly had her mind forgot

All thoughts but one, she heeded not

The rising storm the wave that cast

A moment's midnight, as it passed

Nor heard the frequent shout, the tread
Of gathering tumult o'er her head-

Clashed swords, and tongues that seemed to vie With the rude riot of the sky.

But, hark! that war-whoop on the deck

That crash, as if each engine there,
Mast, sails, and all, were gone to wreck,
Mid yells and stampings of despair!
Merciful Heaven! what can it be?
"Tis not the storm, though fearfully
The ship has shuddered as she rode
O'er mountain-waves

"Forgive me

"Forgive me, God!

- shrieked the maid, and knelt,

Trembling all over-for she felt

As if her judgment-hour was near;

While crouching round, half dead with fear, Her handmaids clung, nor breathed, nor stirred·

Blood, waves, and tackle, swords and men
Come mixed together through the chasm,-
Some wretches in their dying spasm
Still fighting on and some that call
"For GOD and IRAN!" as they fall!

Whose was the hand that turned away The perils of th' infuriate fray,

And snatched her breathless from beneath