Ah ZELICA! there was a time, when bliss Shone o'er thy heart from every look of his; When but to see him, hear him, breathe the air, In which he dwelt, was thy soul's fondest prayer; When round him hung such a perpetual spell, Whate'er he did, none ever did so well.
Too happy days! when, if he touched a flower
Or gem of thine, 'twas sacred from that hour;
When thou didst study him till every tone
And gesture and dear look became thy own,-
Thy voice like his, the changes of his face
In thine reflected with still lovelier grace,
Like echo, sending back sweet music, fraught
With twice th' aerial sweetness it had brought!
Yet now he comes,-brighter than even he
E'er beamed before,—but, ah! not bright for thee,
No-dread, unlooked for, like a visitant
From th' other world, he comes as if to haunt
Thy guilty soul with dreams of lost delight,
Long lost to all but memory's aching sight;—
Sad dreams! as when the Spirit of our Youth
Returns in sleep, sparkling with all the truth
And innocence once ours, and leads us back,
In mournful mockery, o'er the shining track
Of our young life, and points out every ray
Of hope and peace we've lost upon the way!
Once happy pair!-In proud BOKHARA's groves,
Who had not heard of their first youthful loves?
Born by that ancient flood," which from its spring
In the Dark Mountains swiftly wandering,
Enriched by every pilgrim brook that shines
With relics from BUCHARIA's ruby mines,
And, lending to the CASPIAN half its strength,
In the cold Lake of Eagles sinks at length;—
There, on the banks of that bright river born,
The flowers, that hung above its wave at morn,
Blessed not the waters, as they murmured by,
With holier scent and lustre, than the sigh
And virgin-glance of first affection cast
Upon their youth's smooth current, as it passed!
But war disturbed this vision,-far away
From her fond eyes summoned to join th' array
Of PERSIA'S warriors on the hills of THRACE,
The youth exchanged his sylvan dwelling-place
For the rude tent and war-field's deathful clash;
His ZELICA's Sweet glances for the flash
Of Grecian wild-fire, and Love's gentle chains
For bleeding bondage on BYZANTIUM's plains.
Month after month, in widowhood of soul Drooping, the maiden saw two summers roll
a The Amoo, which rises in the Belur Tag, or Dark Mountains, and running nearly from east to west, splits into two branches; one of which falls into the Caspian Sea, and the other into Aral Nahr, or the Lake of Eagles.
Their suns away-but, ah, how cold and dim
Ev'n summer suns, when not beheld with him!
From time to time ill-omened rumours came,
Like spirit-tongues, muttering the sick man's name,
Just ere he dies;—at length those sounds of dread
Fell withering on her soul, "AZIM is dead!"
O Grief, beyond all other griefs, when fate
First leaves the young heart lone and desolate
In the wide world, without that only tie
For which it loved to live or feared to die;-
Lorn as the hung-up lute, that ne'er hath spoken
Since the sad day its master-chord was broken!
Fond maid, the sorrow of her soul was such,
Ev'n reason sunk,-blighted beneath its touch;
And though, ere long, her sanguine spirit rose
Above the first dead pressure of its woes,
Though health and bloom returned, the delicate chain
Of thought, once tangled, never cleared again.
Warm, lively, soft as in youth's happiest day,
The mind was still all there, but turned astray;-
A wandering bark, upon whose pathway shone
All stars of heaven, except the guiding one!
Again she smiled, nay, much and brightly smiled,
But 'twas a lustre, strange, unreal, wild;
And when she sung to her lute's touching strain,.
'Twas like the notes, half ecstasy, half pain,
The bulbul utters, ere her soul depart,
When, vanquished by some minstrel's powerful art,
She dies upon the lute whose sweetness broke her heart!
Such was the mood in which that mission found
Young ZELICA,-that mission, which around
The Eastern world, in every region blessed
With woman's smile, sought out its loveliest,
To grace that galaxy of lips and eyes
Which the Veiled Prophet destined for the skies ;-
And such quick welcome as a spark receives
Dropped on a bed of Autumn's withered leaves,
Did every tale of these enthusiasts find
In the wild maiden's sorrow-blighted mind.
All fire at once the maddening zeal she caught;—
Elect of Paradise! blest, rapturous thought!
Predestined bride, in heaven's eternal dome,
Of some brave youth-ha! durst they say "of some?”
No-of the one, one only object, traced
In her heart's core too deep to be effaced;
The one whose memory, fresh as life, is twined
With every broken link of her lost mind;
Whose image lives, though Reason's self be wrecked,
Safe 'mid the ruins of her intellect!
Alas, poor ZELICA! it needed all
The fantasy, which held thy mind in thrall,
To see in that gay Haram's glowing maids,
A sainted colony for Eden's shades;
Or dream that he, of whose unholy flame
Thou wert too soon the victim,-shining came
From Paradise, to people its pure sphere
With souls like thine, which he hath ruined here!
No-had not reason's light totally set,·
And left thee dark, thou hadst an amulet
In the loved image, graven on thy heart,
Which would have saved thee from the tempter's art,
And kept alive, in all its bloom of breath,
That purity, whose fading is love's death!
But lost, inflamed,-a restless zeal took place
Of the mild virgin's still and feminine grace;
First of the Prophet's favourites, proudly first
In zeal and charms,-too well th' Impostor nursed
Her soul's delirium, in whose active flame,
Thus lighting up a young, luxuriant frame,
He saw more potent sorceries to bind
To his dark yoke the spirits of mankind,
More subtle chains than hell itself e'er twined.
No art was spared, no witchery ;—all the skill
His demons taught him was employed to fill
Her mind with gloom and ecstasy by turns-.
That gloom, through which Frenzy but fiercer burns;
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