"And yet thou sleep'st-up, child, and see "Before another dawn shall shine, "His head heart - limbs - will all be mine; "This very night his blood shall steep "His blood!" she faintly scream'd- her mind "Back from their course the Swords of Heaven, "When God and Vengeance speed the blow. "Thou wor'st on ОHOD's field of death,* is described as uncommonly dreadful, and so loud as to be heard at the distance of several miles."- RICHARDSON. * "Mohammed had two helmets, an interior and exterior one; the latter of which, called Al Mawashah, the fillet, wreath, or wreathed garland, he wore at the battle of Ohod."- Universal History "I swear, for every sob that parts "In anguish from these heathen hearts, "A gem from PERSIA'S plunder'd mines "Shall glitter on thy Shrine of Shrines. "But, ha!-she sinks- that look so wild"Those vivid lips-my child, my child, "This life of blood befits not thee, "And thou must back to ARABY. : "Ne'er had I risk'd thy timid sex "In scenes that man himself might dread, Had I not hop'd our every tread 66 "Would be on prostrate Persian necks "Curst race, they offer swords instead! "But cheer thee, maid, the wind that now "Is blowing o'er thy feverish brow, To-day shall waft thee from the shore; "And, e'er a drop of this night's gore "Have time to chill in yonder towers, "Thou❜lt see thy own sweet Arab bowers!" His bloody boast was all too true; Left on the field last dreadful night, That sun, which should have gilt his grave, Oh for a tongue to curse the slave, Comes o'er the councils of the brave, And blasts them in their hour of might! Be drugg'd with treacheries to the brim, With joys, that vanish while he sips, * "They say that there are apple-trees upon the sides of this sea, which bear very lovely fruit, but within are all full of ashes."-THEVENOT. The same is asserted of the oranges there; v. Whitman's Travels in Asiatic Turkey. "The Asphalt Lake, known by the name of the Dead Sea, is very remarkable on account of the considerable proportion of salt which it contains. In this respect it surpasses every other known water on the surface of the earth. This great proportion of bitter tasted salts is the reason why neither animal nor plant can live in this water."- KLAPROTH'S Chemical Analysis of the water of the His country's curse, his children's shame, Like the once glorious hopes he blasted! Beholding heaven, and feeling hell! Dead Sea, Annals of Philosophy, January, 1813. Hasselquist, however, doubts the truth of this last assertion, as there are shell-fish to be found in the lake. Lord Byron has a similar allusion to the fruits of the Dead Sea, in that wonderful display of genius, his third Canto of Childe Harold,-magnificent beyond anything, perhaps, that even he has ever written. * "The Suhrab or water of the Desert is said to be caused by the rarefaction of the atmosphere from extreme heat; and, which augments the delusion, it is most frequent in hollows, where water might be expected to lodge. I have seen bushes and trees reflected in it, with as much accuracy as though it had been the face of a clear and still lake."-POTTINGER. "As to the unbelievers, their works are like a vapour in a plain, which the thirsty traveller thinketh to be water, until when he cometh thereto he findeth it to be nothing."-Koran, chap. 24. LALLA ROOKH had, the night before, been visited by a dream which, in spite of the impending fate of poor HAFED, made her heart more than usually cheerful during the morning, and gave her cheeks all the freshened animation of a flower that the Bid-musk had just passed over.* She fancied that she was sailing on that Eastern Ocean, where the sea-gipsies, who live for ever on the watert, enjoy a perpetual summer in wandering from isle to isle, when she saw a small gilded bark approaching her. It was like one of those boats which the Maldivian "A wind which prevails in February, called Bidmusk, from a small and odoriferous flower of that name."-"The wind which blows these flowers commonly lasts till the end of the month."- LE BRUYN. "The Biajús are of two races: the one is settled on Borneo, and are a rude but warlike and industrious nation, who reckon themselves the original possessors of the island of Borneo. The other is a species of sea-gipsies or itinerant fishermen, who live in small covered boats, and enjoy a perpetual summer on the eastern ocean, shifting to leeward from island to island, with the variations of the monsoon. In some of their customs this singular race resemble the natives of the Maldivia islands. The Maldivians annually launch a small bark, loaded with perfumes, gums, flowers, and odoriferous wood, and turn it adrift at the mercy of winds and waves, as an offering to the Spirit of the Winds; and sometimes similar offerings are made to the spirit whom they term the King of the Sea. In like manner the Biajús perform their offering to the god of evil, launching a small bark, loaded with all the sins and misfortunes of the nation, which are imagined to fall on the unhappy crew that may be so unlucky as first to meet with it."-DR. LEYDEN on the Languages and Literature of the IndoChinese Nations. |