In savage loneliness to brood
Upon the coming night of blood,
With that keen second-scent of death, By which the vulture snuffs his food
In the still warm and living breath!* While o'er the wave his weeping daughter Is wafted from these scenes of slaughter, As a young bird of Babylon,t
Let loose to tell of victory won,
Flies home, with wing, ah! not unstain'd
By the red hands that held her chain'd.
And does the long-left home she seeks
Light up no gladness on her cheeks?
The flowers she nurs'd, the well-known groves,
Where oft in dreams her spirit roves-
Once more to see her dear gazelles
Come bounding with their silver bells;
Her birds' new plumage to behold,
And the gay gleaming fishes count,
She left, all filleted with gold,
Shooting around their jasper fount.‡
"I have been told that whensoever an animal falls down dead, one or more vultures, unseen before, instantly appear.” ---Pennant.
†They fasten some writing to the wings of a Bagdat or Babylonian pigeon."..-Travels of certain Englishmen.
"The empress of Jehan-Guire used to divert herself with feeding tame fish in her canals, some of which were ma
Her little garden mosque to see,
And once again, at evening hour,
To tell her ruby rosary,
In her own sweet acacia bower.
Can these delights, that wait her now,
Call up no sunshine on her brow?
No-silent, from her train apart,
As if even now she felt at heart
The chill of her approaching doom,
She sits, all lovely in her gloom
As a pale angel of the grave;
And o'er the wide tempestuous wave
Looks, with a shudder, to those towers,
Where, in a few short awful hours,
Blood, blood, in steaming tides, shall run,
Foul incense for to-morrow's sun!
"Where art thou, glorious stranger! thou
"So lov'd, so lost, where art thou now?
"Foe-Gheber-infidel-whate'er
"Th' unhallow'd name thou'rt doom'd to bear,
"Still glorious—still to this fond heart
"Dear as its blood, whate'er thou art!
"Yes, ALLA, dreadful ALLA! yes-
"If there be wrong, be crime in this,
"Let the black waves that round us roll,
"Whelm me this instant, ere my soul,
"Forgetting faith, home, father, all-
"Before its earthly idol fall,
ny years afterwards known by fillets of gold which she caused to be put round them"---Harris.
"Nor worship ev'n Thyself above him.
"For oh! so wildly do I love him,
"Thy Paradise itself were dim,
"And joyless, if not shar'd with him!”
Her hands were clasp'd, her eyes upturn'd,
Dropping their tears like moonlight rain;
And though her lip, fond raver! burn'd
With words of passion, bold, profane,
Yet was there light around her brow,
A holiness in those dark eyes,
Which show'd, though wandering earthward now,
Her spirit's home was in the skies.
Yes-for a spirit pure as hers,
Is always pure, ev'n while it errs;
As sunshine, broken in the rill,
Though turn'd astray, is sunshine still!
So wholly had her mind forgot
All thoughts but one, she heeded not
The rising storm-the wave that cast
A moment's midnight, as it pass'd-
Nor heard the frequent shout, the tread
Of gathering tumult o'er her head—
Clash'd swords and tongues that seem'd to vie
With the rude riot of the sky.
But hark!-that war-whoop on the deck—
That crash, as if each engine there,
Mast, sails, and all were gone to wreck,
Mid yells and stampings of despair!
Merciful Heaven! what can it be?
"Tis not the storm, though fearfully
The ship has shudder'd as she rode
O'er mountain waves-" Forgive me God!
"Forgive me"-shriek'd the maid, and knelt,
Trembling all over,-for she felt
As if her judgment-hour was near;
While crouching round, half dead with fear,
Her handmaids clung, nor breath'd, nor stirr❜d--
When hark!-a second crash-a third-
And now, as if a bolt of thunder,
Had riv'n the labouring planks asunder,
The deck falls in-what horrors then!
Blood, waves, and tackle, swords and men
Come mix'd together through the chasm;
Some wretches in their dying spasm
Still fighting on-and some that call
"For God and IRAN!" as they fall!
Whose was the hand that turn'd away
The perils of th' infuriate fray,
And snatch'd her breathless from beneath
This wilderment of wreck and death?
She knew not-for a faintness came
Chill o'er her, and her sinking frame
Amid the ruins of that hour
Lay, like a pale and scorched flower,
Beneath the red volcano's shower!
But oh! the sights and sounds of dread
That shock'd her ere her senses fled !
The yawning deck-the crowd that strove
Upon the tottering planks above-
The sail, whose fragments shivering o'er
The strugglers' heads, all dash'd with gore,
Flutter'd like bloody flags-the clash
Of sabres, and the lightning's flash
Upon their blades, high toss'd about
Like meteor brands*-as if throughout
The elements one fury ran,
One general rage, that left a doubt
Which was the fiercer, Heaven or man!
Once too-but no-It could not be-
'Twas fancy all-yet once she thought,
While yet her fading eyes could see,
High on the ruin'd deck she caught A glimpse of that unearthly form,
That glory of her soul,—ev'n then,
Amid the whirl of wreck and storm,
Shining above his fellow-men,
As, on some black and troublous night,
The Star of EGYPT,† whose proud light
Never has beam'd on those who rest
In the White Islands of the West,‡
* The meteors that Pliny calls "faces."
"The brilliant Canopus, unseen in European climates." Brown.
V. Wilford's learned Essays on the Sacred Isles in the West.
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