such as, in old times, the Arab maids of the West used to listen to by moonlight in the gardens of the Alhambraand, having premised, with much humility, that the story he was about to relate was founded on the adventures of that Veiled Prophet of Khorassan,24 who, in the year of the Hegira 163, created such alarm throughout the Eastern Empire, made an obeisance to the Princess, and thus began:

IN that delightful Province of the Sun,
The first of Persian lands he shines upon,
Where all the loveliest children of his beam,
Flow'rets and fruits, blush over every stream,26

And, fairest of all streams, the MURGA roves
Among MEROU's 27 bright palaces and groves;—
There on that throne, to which the blind belief
Of millions rais'd him, sat the Prophet-Chief,
The Great MOKANNA. O'er his features hung
The Veil, the Silver Veil, which he had flung
In mercy there, to hide from mortal sight

His dazzling brow, till man could bear its light.

For, far less luminous, his votaries said,

Were ev'n the gleams, miraculously shed

O'er MOUSSA's 28 cheek,29 when down the Mount he trod,

All glowing from the presence of his God!

On either side, with ready hearts and hands,
His chosen guard of bold Believers stands;
Young fire-eyed disputants, who deem their swords,
On points of faith, more eloquent than words;
And such their zeal, there's not a youth with brand
Uplifted there, but, at the Chief's command,
Would make his own devoted heart its sheath,

And bless the lips that doom'd so dear a death!

In hatred to the Caliph's hue of night,30
Their vesture, helms and all, is snowy white;

Their weapons various-some equipp'd for speed,
With javelins of the light Kathaian reed;

31

Or bows of buffalo horn and shining quivers