Nay, who can coolly note the line, The letter of those words divine, To which his blade, with searching art, Just ALLA! what must be thy look, When such a wretch before thee stands Unblushing, with thy Sacred Book, Turning the leaves with blood-stain'd 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 doom'd to bend Beneath a yoke of deadlier weight. Her throne had fall'n - her pride was crush'd - 7 "There is a kind of Rhododendros about Trebizond, whose flowers the bee feeds upon, and the honey thence drives people mad."-Tournefort. In their own land, no more their own, Her towers, where MITHRA once had burn'd, were turn'd, Where slaves, converted by the sword, O'er all this wreck high buoyant still With hope and vengeance; - hearts that yet, Like gems, in darkness issuing rays And swords she hath, nor weak nor slow Becalm'd in Heav'n's approving ray ! Those waves are hush'd, those planets shine. By the white moonbeam's dazzling power; N None but the loving and the lov'd 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,3 Hang from the lattice, long and wild, Oh what a pure and sacred thing 9 Is Beauty, curtain'd from the sight Of the gross world, illumining One only mansion with her light! 8" Their kings wear plumes of black herons' feathers upon the right side, as a badge of sovereignty." - Hanway. 9" The Fountain of Youth, by a Mahometan tradition, is situated in some dark region of the east.”. Richardson. 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 enshrin'd. And oh what transport for a lover To lift the veil that shades them o'er ! Like those who, all at once, discover In the lone deep some fairy shore, Where mortal never trod before, And sleep and wake in scented airs No lip had ever breath'd but theirs! Beautiful are the maids that glide, On summer-eves, through YEMEN's ' dales, And bright the glancing looks they hide Behind their litters' roseate veils ; As the white jasmine flowers they wear, Who, lull'd in cool kiosk or bower, Arabia Felix. Before their mirrors count the time, And grow still lovelier every hour. Light as the angel shapes that bless With eyes so pure, that from their ray Where, through some shades of earthly feeling, 2 "They say that if a snake or serpent fix his eyes on the lustre of those stones (emeralds), he immediately becomes blind."- Ahmed ben Abdalaziz, Treatise on Jewels. |