Sees, call'd up round her by these magic scents,
The well, the camels, and her father's tents;
Sighs for the home she left with little pain,
And wishes ev'n its sorrows back again!

Meanwhile, through vast illuminated halls, Silent and bright, where nothing but the falls Of fragrant waters, gushing with cool sound From many a jasper fount is heard around,

Young Azim roams bewilder'd,

nor can guess

What means this maze of light and loneliness.
Here, the way leads, o'er tesselated floors
Or mats of CAIRO, through long corridors,
Where, rang'd in cassolets and silver urns,
Sweet wood of aloe or of sandal burns;
And spicy rods, such as illume at night

The bowers of TIBET, send forth odorous light,
Like Peris' wands, when pointing out the road
For some pure Spirit to its blest abode !

7" Cloves are a principal ingredient in the composition of the perfumed rods, which men of rank keep constantly burning in their presence." Turner's Tibet.

And here, at once, the glittering saloon

Bursts on his sight, boundless and bright as noon;
Where, in the midst, reflecting back the rays
In broken rainbows, a fresh fountain plays
High as th' enamell'd cupola, which towers
All rich with Arabesques of gold and flowers:
And the mosaic floor beneath shines through
The sprinkling of that fountain's silvery dew,
Like the wet, glistening shells, of every dye,
That on the margin of the Red Sea lie.

Here too he traces the kind visitings
Of woman's love in those fair, living things

Of land and wave, whose fate, in bondage thrown

---

For their weak loveliness is like her own!

On one side gleaming with a sudden grace
Through water, brilliant as the crystal vase
In which it undulates, small fishes shine,
Like golden ingots from a fairy mine;
While, on the other, lattic'd lightly in
With odoriferous woods of COMORIN,

8

8 C'est d'où vient le bois d'aloes, que les Arabes appellent Oud Comari, et celui du sandal, qui s'y trouve en grande quantité. — D'Herbelot.

Each brilliant bird that wings the air is seen;-
Gay, sparkling loories, such as gleam between
The crimson blossoms of the coral tree'
In the warm isles of India's sunny sea:
Mecca's blue sacred pigeon', and the thrush
Of Hindostan', whose holy warblings gush,
At evening, from the tall pagoda's top; —
Those golden birds that, in the spice time, drop
About the gardens, drunk with that sweet food

Whose scent hath lur'd them o'er the summer

flood; 3

9 "Thousands of variegated loories visit the coral-trees."

Barrow.

"In Mecca there are quantities of blue pigeons, which none will affright or abuse, much less kill.”

Pitt's Account of the Mahometans.

2 "The Pagoda Thrush is esteemed among the first choristers of India. It sits perched on the sacred Pagodas, and from thence delivers its melodious song."-Pennant's Hindostan.

3 Birds of Paradise, which, at the nutmeg season, come in flights from the southern isles to India, and "the strength of the nutmeg," says Tavernier, so intoxicates them that they fall dead drunk to

the earth."

And those that under ARABY's soft sun
Build their high nests of budding cinnamon; *~~
In short, all rare and beauteous things, that fly
Through the pure element, here calmly lie
Sleeping in light, like the green birds' that dwell
In Eden's radiant fields of asphodel!

So on, through scenes past all imagining, More like the luxuries of that impious King," Whom Death's dark Angel, with his lightning torch, Struck down and blasted even in Pleasure's porch,

Than the pure dwelling of a Prophet sent,

Arm'd with Heav'n's sword, for man's enfranchisement-
Young Azim wander'd, looking sternly round,
His simple garb and war-boots' clanking sound
But ill according with the pomp and grace

And silent lull of that voluptuous place!

4 "That bird which liveth in Arabia, and buildeth its nest with cinnamon."- Brown's Vulgar Errors.

5 "The spirits of the martyrs will be lodged in the crops of birds."- Gibbon, vol. ix. p. 421.

green

6 Shedad, who made the delicious gardens of Irim, in imitation of Paradise, and was destroyed by lightning the first time he attempted to enter them.

"Is this then," thought the youth, "is this the way "To free man's spirit from the deadening sway "Of worldly sloth; - to teach him, while he lives, "To know no bliss but that which virtue gives, "And when he dies, to leave his lofty name "A light, a land-mark on the cliffs of fame? "It was not so, land of the generous thought "And daring deed! thy godlike sages taught; "It was not thus, in bowers of wanton ease, "Thy Freedom nurs'd her sacred energies; "Oh! not beneath th' enfeebling, withering glow "Of such dull luxury did those myrtles grow,

"With which she wreath'd her sword, when she would ❝ dare

"Immortal deeds; but in the bracing air

"Of toil, of temperance, of that high, rare,

-

-

"Etherial virtue, which alone can breathe

"Life, health, and lustre into Freedom's wreath !
"Who, that surveys this span of earth we press,
"This speck of life in time's great wilderness,
"This narrow isthmus 'twixt two boundless seas,
"The past, the future, two eternities! -