But never yet hath bride or maid In ARABY'S gay Haram smiled, Light as the angel shapes that bless · With eyes so pure, that from their ray Dark Vice would turn abashed away, Blinded like serpents, when they gaze a Upon the emerald's virgin blaze; a A soul, too, more than half divine, Where, through some shades of earthly feeling, Like light through summer foliage stealing, As makes the very darkness there More beautiful than light elsewhere. 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. Such is the maid who, at this hour, Hath risen from her restless sleep, Watching the still and shining deep. In her own land, in happier days. Why looks she now so anxious down Blackens the mirror of the deep? Whom waits she all this lonely night? Too rough the rocks, too bold the steep, So deemed at least her thoughtful sire, He built her bower of freshness there, Nor wake to learn what Love can dare;— Love, all-defying Love, who sees No charm in trophies won with ease;— a «At Gombaroon and the Isle of Ormus it is sometimes so hot, that the people are obliged to lie all day in the water."-Marco Polo. Whose rarest, dearest fruits of bliss For pearls, but when the sea's at rest, Hath ever held that pearl the best He finds beneath the stormiest water. Though high that tower, that rock-way rude, Of ARARAT's tremendous peak," And think its steeps, though dark and dread, a «This mountain is generally supposed to be inaccessible. Struy says, "I can well assure the reader that their opinion is not true, who suppose this mount to be inaccessible." He adds, that "the lower part of the mountain is cloudy, misty, and dark, the middlemost part very cold, and like clouds of snow, but the upper regions perfectly calm."-It was on this mountain that the ark was supposed to have rested after the Deluge, and part of it, they say, exists there still, which Struy thus gravely accounts for:-"Whereas none can remember that the air on the top of the hill did ever change or was subject either to wind or rain, which is presumed to be the reason that the Ark has endured so long without being rotten."-See Carreri's Travels, where the Doctor laughs at this whole account of Mount Ararat. And stretchest down thy arms of snow, As if to lift him from below! Like her to whom, at dead of night, She flung him down her long black hair, Exclaiming, breathless, "There, love, there!" The hero ZAL in that fond hour, Than wings the youth who, fleet and bold, Now climbs the rocks to HINDA's bower. See-light as up their granite steeps The rock-goats of ARABIA clamber, Fearless from crag to crag he leaps, b And now is in the maiden's chamber. She loves but knows not whom she loves, Nor what his race, nor whence he came ;— a In one of the books of the Shah Nâmeh, when Zal (a celebrated hero of Persia, remarkable for his white hair) comes to the terrace of his mistress Rodahver at night, she lets down her long tresses to assist him in his ascent;— he, however, manages it in a less romantic way by fixing his crook in a projecting beam."-See Champion's Ferdosi. "On the lofty hills of Arabia Petræa are rock-goats."-Niebuhr. Like one who meets, in Indian groves, To wondering eyes, and wing away! Gleam through the lattice of the bower, Where nightly now they mix their sighs; And thought some spirit of the air (For what could waft a mortal there?) Was pausing on his moonlight way To listen to her lonely lay! This fancy ne'er hath left her mind: And though, when terror's swoon had past, She saw a youth, of mortal kind, Before her in obeisance cast,— Yet often since, when he hath spoken Strange, awful words,—and gleams have broken a «Canun, espèce de psalterion, avec des cordes de boyaux; les dames en touchent dans le serrail, avec des décailles armées de pointes de cooc."Toderini, translated by De Cournand. |