Which doth entrance Each passionate dance, And glows or flashes Mid cymbal clashes, Rich jewelled sashes, Cap, turban, and tiara, In a tossing sea

Of ecstasy,

At the Fair of Almachara!

VI.

There, too, the story-tellers,
With long beards and bald pates,
Right earnestly romancing
Grave follies of the Fates,

For which their circling auditors

Throw coins and bags of dates. Some of the youths and maidens shed Sweet tears, or turn quite pale; But silence, and the clouded pipe, O'er all the rest prevail.

Mark yon Egyptian sorcerer,

In black and yellow robes, His ragged raven locks he twines Around two golden globes! And now he lashes a brazen gong, Whirling about with shriek and song; Till the globes burst in fire,

Which, in a violet spire,

Shoots o'er the loftiest tent-tops there,
Then fades away in perfume rare;
With music somewhere in the sky,
Whereat the sorcerer seems to die!

Broad cymbals are clashing,
And flying and flashing!
And spinning and pashing!
The silver bells ringing!
All tingling and dinging!
Gongs booming and swinging!
The Fair's at its height
In the cool brilliant night!
While streams the moon's glory
On javelins and sabres,
And long beards all hoary,

Midst trumpets and tabors,
Wild strugglings and trammels
Of leaders and camels
And horsemen, in masses,
Midst droves of wild asses,
The clear beams entrancing,
The passionate dancing,
Glaring fixt, or in flashes,
From jewels in sashes,
Cap, turban, tiara;

"T is a tossing sea

Of ecstasy,

At the Fair of Almachara!

Richard Hengist Horne.

Desert of Arabia.

DESERT OF ARABIA.

WOW beautiful is night!

HOW

A dewy freshness fills the silent air;

No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain,
Breaks the serene of heaven:

In full-orbed glory yonder moon divine
Rolls through the dark blue depths.
Beneath her steady ray

The desert-circle spreads,

Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky.
How beautiful is night!

Who at this untimely hour
Wanders o'er the desert sands?
No station is in view,

Nor palm-grove, islanded amid the waste.
The mother and her child,

The widowed mother and the fatherless boy,
They at this untimely hour

Wander o'er the desert sands.

*

She cast her eyes around,
Alas! no tents were there

Beside the bending sands,

No palm-tree rose to spot the wilderness;
The dark blue sky closed round,

And rested like a dome
Upon the circling waste.
She cast her eyes around,

Famine and Thirst were there;

And then the wretched mother bowed her head,

And wept upon her child.

Robert Southey.

HYMN OF THE HEBREW MAID.

HEN Israel, of the Lord beloved,

WHE

Out from the land of bondage came,
Her fathers' God before her moved,
An awful guide in smoke and flame.
By day, along the astonished lands
The cloudy pillar glided slow;
By night, Arabia's crimsoned sands
Returned the fiery column's glow.

There rose the choral hymn of praise,
And trump and timbrel answered keen,
And Zion's daughters poured their lays,
With priest's and warrior's voice between.
No portents now our foes amaze,

Forsaken Israel wanders lone;

Our fathers would not know thy ways,
And thou hast left them to their own.

But, present still, though now unseen,
When brightly shines the prosperous day,
Be thoughts of thee a cloudy screen,
To temper the deceitful ray.

And, O, when stoops on Judah's path
In shade and storm the frequent night,
Be thou, long-suffering, slow to wrath,
A burning and a shining light!

Our harps we left by Babel's streams,-
The tyrant's jest, the Gentile's scorn;
No censer round our altar beams,

And mute are timbrel, trump, and horn.
But thou hast said, the blood of goats,

The flesh of rams, I will not prize,
A contrite heart and humble thoughts
Are mine accepted sacrifice.

Sir Walter Scott.

TH

THE LOCUSTS.

HEN Moath pointed where a cloud
Of locusts, from the desolated fields
Of Syria, winged their way.

"Lo! how created things

Obey the written doom."

Onward they came, a dark continuous cloud Of congregated myriads numberless, The rushing of whose wings was as the sound Of some broad river, headlong in its course Plunged from a mountain summit; or the roar Of a wild ocean in the autumnal storm, Shattering its billows on a shore of rocks. Onward they came, the winds impelled them on, Their work was done, their path of ruin past, Their graves were ready in the wilderness. Robert Southey.