human
Can you write me a poem about thalba the destroyer 1801 in the style of Alphonse de Lamartine?
assistant
Sure, here's a poem about thalba the destroyer 1801 in the style of Alphonse de Lamartine:
  the destroyer
This edition first published 1991 by
Thalba the destroyer 1801.--(Revolution and
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
to doxan to poiete.]
_Lucian, Quomodo Hist. scribenda._
The second Book
The third Book
The fourth Book
The fifth Book
How beautiful is night!
A dewy freshness fills the silent air,
No mist obscures, no little cloud
Breaks the whole serene of heaven:
In full-orbed glory the majestic moon
Rolls thro 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,
No palm-grove islanded amid the waste.
The mother and her child,
The widow and the orphan at this hour
Wander o'er the desert sands.
Alas! the setting sun
Saw Zeinab in her bliss,
Hodeirah's wife beloved.
Alas! the wife beloved,
The fruitful mother late,
Whom when the daughters of Arabia named
They wished their lot like her's;
She wanders o'er the desert sands
A wretched widow now,
The fruitful mother of so fair a race,
With only one preserved,
She wanders o'er the wilderness.
No tear relieved the burthen of her heart;
Stunned with the heavy woe she felt like one
Half-wakened from a midnight dream of blood.
But sometimes when her boy
Would wet her hand with tears,
And looking up to her fixed countenance,
Amid his bursting sobs
Say the dear name of MOTHER, then would she
Utter a feeble groan.
At length collecting, Zeinab turned her eyes
To heaven, exclaiming, "praised be the Lord!
"He gave, he takes away,
"The Lord our God is good!"
"Good is he?" cried the boy,
"Why are my brethren and my sisters slain?
"Why is my father killed?
"Did ever we neglect our prayers,
"Or ever lift a hand unclean to heaven?
"Did ever stranger from our tent
"Unwelcomed turn away?
"Mother, he is not good!"
Then Zeinab beat her breast in agony,
"O God forgive my child!
"He knows not what he says!
"Thou know'st I did not teach him thoughts like these,
"O Prophet, pardon him!"
She had not wept till that assuaging prayer....
The fountains of her eyes were opened then,
And tears relieved her heart.
She raised her swimming eyes to Heaven,
"Allah, thy will be done!
"Beneath the dispensation of thy wrath
"I groan, but murmur not.
"The Day of the Trial will come,
"When I shall understand how profitable
"It is to suffer now."
Young Thalaba in silence heard reproof,
His brow in manly frowns was knit,
With manly thoughts his heart was full.
"Tell me who slew my father?" cried the boy.
Zeinab replied and said,
"I knew not that there lived thy father's foe.
"The blessings of the poor for him
"Went daily up to Heaven,
"In distant lands the traveller told his praise.
"I did not think there lived
"Hodeirah's enemy."
"But I will hunt him thro' the earth!"
Young Thalaba exclaimed.
"Already I can bend my father's bow,
"Soon will my arm have strength
"To drive the arrow-feathers to his heart."
Zeinab replied, "O Thalaba, my child,
"Thou lookest on to distant days,
"And we are in the desert far from men!"
Not till that moment her afflicted heart
Had leisure for the thought.
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.
Then the mother bowed her head,
And wept upon her child.
... Sudden a cry of wonder
From Thalaba aroused her,
She raised her head, and saw
Where high in air a stately palace rose.
Amid a grove embowered
Stood the prodigious pile,
Trees of such ancient majesty
Towered not on Yemen's happy hills,
Nor crowned the stately brow of Lebanon.
Fabric so vast, so lavishly enriched,
For Idol, or for Tyrant, never yet
Raised the slave race of men
In Rome, nor in the elder Babylon,
Nor where the family of Greece
Here studding azure tablatures
And rayed with feeble light,
Star-like the ruby and the diamond shone:
Here on the golden towers
The yellow moon-beam lay;
Here with white splendour floods the silver wall.
Less wonderous pile and less magnificent
Sennamar built at Hirah, tho' his art
Sealed with one stone the ample edifice
And made its colours, like the serpents skin
Play with a changeful beauty: him, its Lord
Jealous lest after-effort might surpass
The now unequalled palace, from its height
Dashed on the pavement down.
They entered, and through aromatic paths
Wondering they went along.
At length upon a mossy bank
Beneath a tall mimosa's shade
That o'er him bent its living canopy,
They saw a man reclined.
Young he appeared, for on his cheek there shone
The morning glow of health,
And the brown beard curled close around his chin.
He slept, but at the sound
Of coming feet awakening, fixed his eyes
In wonder, on the wanderer and her child.
"Forgive us," Zeinab cried,
"Distress hath made us bold.
"Relieve the widow and the fatherless.
"Blessed are they who succour the distrest
"For them hath God appointed Paradise."
He heard, and he looked up to heaven,
And tears ran down his cheeks:
"It is a human voice!
"I thank thee, O my God!
"How many an age has past
"Since the sweet sounds have visited mine ear!
"I thank thee, O my God,
"It is a human voice!"
To Zeinab turning then he cried
"O mortal who art thou
"Whose gifted eyes have pierced
"The shadow of concealment that hath wrapt
"These bowers, so many an age,
"From eye of mortal man?
"For countless years have past
"And never foot of man
"The bowers of Irem trod.
"Save only I, a miserable wretch
"From Heaven and Earth shut out!"
Fearless, and scarce surprized,
For grief in Zeinab's soul
All other feebler feelings overpowered,
She answered, "Yesterday
"I was a wife beloved,
"The fruitful mother of a numerous race.
"I am a widow now,
"Of all my offspring this alone is left.
"He gave, he takes away!"
Then said the stranger, "Not by Heaven unseen
"Nor with unguided feet
"Thy steps have reached this secret place
"Nor for light purpose is the Veil,
"That from the Universe hath long shut out
"These ancient bowers, withdrawn.
"Hear thou my words, O mortal, in thy heart
"Treasure the wonders I shall tell;
"And when amid the world
"Thou shall emerge again
"Repeat the warning tale.
"Why have the Fathers suffered, but to make
"The Children wisely safe?"
"The Paradise of Irem this,
"And that the palace pile
"Which Shedad built, the King.
"Alas! in the days of my youth
"The hum of the populous world
"Was heard in yon wilderness waste!
"O'er all the winding sands
"The tents of Ad were pitch'd;
"Happy Al-Ahkaf then,
"For many and brave were her sons,
"Her daughters were many and fair.
"My name was Aswad then.
"Alas! alas! how strange
"The sound so long unheard!
"Of noble race I came,
"One of the wealthy of the earth my Sire,
"An hundred horses in my father's stalls
"Stood ready for his will;
"Numerous his robes of silk,
"The number of his camels was not known.
"These were my heritance,
"O God! thy gifts were these;
"But better had it been for Aswad's soul
"To have asked alms on earth,
"And begged the crumbs that from his table fell,
"So he had known thy word.
"Boy who hast reached this solitude,
"Fear the Lord in the days of thy youth!
"My knee was never taught
"To bend before my God,
"My voice was never taught
"To shape one holy prayer.
"We worshipped Idols, wood and stone,
"The work of our own foolish hands
"We worshipped in our foolishness.
"Vainly the Prophet's voice
"Its frequent warning raised,
"We mocked the messenger of God,
"We mocked the Lord, long-suffering, slow to wrath.
"A mighty work the pride of Shedad planned,
"Here in the wilderness to form
"A garden more surpassing fair
"Than that before whose gate,
"The lightning of the Cherub's fiery sword
"Waves wide to bar access
"Since Adam, the transgressor, thence was driven.
"Here too would Shedad build
"A kingly pile sublime,
"The palace of his pride.
"For this exhausted mines
"Supplied their golden store,
"For this the central caverns gave their gems;
"For this the woodman's axe
"Opened the cedar forest to the sun;
"The silkworm of the East
"Spun her sepulchral egg;
"The hunter African
"Provoked the danger of the elephant's wrath;
"The Ethiop, keen of scent
"Detects the ebony,
"That deep-inearthed, and hating light,
"A leafless tree and barren of all fruit,
"With darkness feeds her boughs of raven grain....
"Such were the treasures lavished in yon pile;
"Ages have past away
"And never mortal eye
"Gazed on their vanity.
"The garden's copious springs
"Blest that delightful spot,
"And every flower was planted here
"That makes the gale of evening sweet.
"He spake, and bade the full-grown forest rise
"His own creation; should the King
"Wait for slow Nature's work?
"All trees that bend with luscious fruit,
"Or wave with feathery boughs,
"Or point their spiring heads to heaven,
"Or spreading wide their shadowy arms
"Invite the traveller to repose at noon,
"Hither, uprooted with their native soil,
"The labour and the pain of multitudes,
"Mature in beauty, bore them.
"Here, frequent in the walks
"The marble statue stood
"Of heroes and of chiefs.
"The trees and flowers remain
"By Nature's care perpetuate and self-sown.
"The marble statues long have lost all trace
"Of heroes and of chiefs,
"Huge shapeless stones they lie
"O'er-grown with many a flower.
"The work of pride went on....
"Often the Prophet's voice
"Denounced impending woe....
"We mocked at the words of the Seer.
"We mocked at the wrath of the Lord.
"A long continued drought first troubled us,
"Three years no cloud had formed,
"Three years no rain had fallen.
"The wholesome herb was dry,
"The corn matured not for the food of man,
"The wells and fountains failed.
"O hard of heart, in whom the punishment
"Awoke no sense of guilt!
"Headstrong to ruin, obstinately blind,
"To Idols we applied for aid;
"Sakia we invoked for rain,
"We called on Razeka for food....
"They did not hear our prayers, they could not hear!
"No cloud appeared in Heaven,
"No nightly dews came down.
"Then to the place of concourse, messengers
"Were sent to Mecca, where the nations came,
"Round the Red Hillock, kneeling, to implore
"God in his favoured place,
"We sent to call on God;
"Ah fools! unthinking that from all the earth
"The heart ascends to him.
"We sent to call on God;
"Ah fools! to think the Lord
"Would hear their prayers abroad
"Who made no prayers at home!
"Meantime the work of pride went on,
"And still before our Idols, wood and stone,
"We bowed the impious knee.
"Turn men of Ad, and call upon the Lord,"
"The Prophet Houd exclaimed.
"Turn men of Ad and look to Heaven,
"And fly the wrath to come.
"We mocked the Prophet's words;
"Now dost thou dream old man.
"Or art thou drunk with wine?
"Future woe and wrath to come,
"Still thy prudent voice forebodes;
"When it comes will we believe,
"Till it comes will we go on
"In the way our fathers went.
"Now are thy words from God?
"Or dost thou dream, old man,
"Or art thou drunk with wine?"
"So spake the stubborn race
"The unbelieving ones,
"I too of stubborn unbelieving heart
"Heard him and heeded not.
"It chanced my father went the way of man,
"He perished in his sins.
"The funeral rites were duly paid,
"We bound a camel to his grave
"And left it there to die,
"So if the resurrection came
"Together they might rise.
"I past my father's grave,
"I heard the Camel moan.
"She was his favourite beast,
"One that carried me in infancy,
"The first that by myself I learnt to mount.
"Her limbs were lean with famine, and her eyes
"Looked ghastlily with want.
"She knew me as I past,
"She stared me in the face,
"My heart was touched, had it been human else?
"I thought no eye was near, and broke her bonds,
"And drove her forth to liberty and life.
"The Prophet Houd beheld,
"He lifted up his voice,
"Blessed art thou, young man,
"Blessed art thou, O Aswad, for the deed!
"In the day of visitation,
"In the fearful hour of judgment,
"God will remember thee!"
"The day of visitation was at hand,
"The fearful hour of judgment hastened on.
"Lo Shedad's mighty pile complete,
"The palace of his pride.
"Would ye behold its wonders, enter in!
"I have no heart to visit it!
"Time hath not harmed the eternal monument,
"Time is not here, nor days, nor months, nor years,
"An everlasting NOW of misery!...
"Ye must have heard their fame,
"Or likely ye have seen
"The mighty Pyramids,
"For sure those mighty piles shall overlive
"The feeble generations of mankind.
"What tho' unmoved they bore the deluge weight,
"Survivors of the ruined world?
"What tho' their founder filled with miracles
"And wealth miraculous their ample vaults?
"Compared with yonder fabric, and they shrink
"The baby wonders of a woman's work!
"Her emerald columns o'er the marble courts
"Fling their green rays, as when amid a shower
"The sun shines loveliest on the vernal corn.
"Here Shedad bade the sapphire floor be laid,
"As tho' with feet divine
"To trample azure light,
"Like the blue pavement of the firmament.
"Here self-suspended hangs in air,
"As its pure substance loathed material touch,
"The living carbuncle;
"Sun of the lofty dome
"Darkness has no dominion o'er its beams;
"Intense it glows, an ever-flowing tide
"Of glory, like the day-flood in its source.
"Impious! the Trees of vegetable gold,
"Such as in Eden's groves
"Yet innocent it grew,
"Impious! he made his boast, tho' heaven had hidden
"So deep the baneful ore,
"That they should branch and bud for him,
"That art should force their blossoms and their fruit,
"And re-create for him,
"Whate'er was lost in Paradise.
"Therefore at Shedad's voice
"Here towered the palm, a silver trunk,
"The fine gold net-work growing out
"Loose from its rugged boughs.
"Tall as the Cedar of the mountain, here
"Rose the gold branches, hung with emerald leaves,
"Blossomed with pearls, and rich with ruby fruit,
"O Ad! my country! evil was the day
"That thy unhappy sons
"Crouched at this Nimrod's throne,
"And placed him on the pedestal of power,
"And laid their liberties beneath his feet,
"Robbing their children of the heritance
"Their fathers handed down.
"What was to him the squandered wealth?
"What was to him the burthen of the land,
"The lavished misery?
"He did but speak his will,
"And like the blasting Siroc of the East,
"The ruin of the royal voice
"Found its way every-where.
"I marvel not that he, whose power
"No earthly law, no human feeling curbed,
"Mocked at the living God!
"And now the King's command went forth
"Among the people, bidding old and young,
"Husband and wife, the master and the slave,
"All the collected multitudes of Ad,
"Here to repair, and hold high festival,
"That he might see his people, they behold
"Their King's magnificence and power.
"The day of festival arrived,
"Hither they came, the old man and the boy,
"Husband and wife, the master and the slave,
"Hither they came. From yonder high tower top,
"The loftiest of the Palace, Shedad looked
"Down on his tribe: their tents on yonder sands
"Rose like the countless billows of the sea.
"Their tread and voices like the ocean roar,
"One deep confusion of tumultuous sounds.
"They saw their King's magnificence; beheld
"His Palace sparkling like the Angel domes
"Of Paradise; his garden like the bowers
"Of early Eden, and they shouted out
"Great is the King, a God upon the earth!
"Intoxicate with joy and pride
"He heard their blasphemies,
"And in his wantonness of heart he bade
"The Prophet Houd be brought,
"And o'er the marble courts,
"And o'er the gorgeous rooms
"Glittering with gems and gold,
"Is not this a stately pile?"
"Cried the Monarch in his joy.
"Hath ever eye beheld,
"Hath ever thought conceived,
"Place more magnificent?
"Houd, they saw that Heaven imparted
"To thy lips the words of wisdom!
"Look at the riches round
"And value them aright,
"If so thy wisdom can."
"The Prophet heard his vaunt
"And answered with an aweful smile,
"Costly thy palace King!
"But only in the hour of death
"Man learns to value things like these aright.
"Hast thou a fault to find
"In all thine eyes have seen?
"Again the King exclaimed.
"Yes!" said the man of God;
"The walls are weak, the building ill secured.
"Azrael can enter in!
"The Sarsar can pierce thro',
"I was beside the Monarch when he spake....
"Gentle the Prophet spake,
"But in his eye there dwelt
"A sorrow that disturbed me while I gazed,
"The countenance of Shedad fell,
"And anger sate upon his paler lips.
"He to the high tower top the Prophet led,
"And pointed to the multitude,
"And as again they shouted out
"Great is the King! a God upon the Earth!"
"Turned with a threatful smile to Houd,
"Say they aright, O Prophet? is the King
"Great upon earth, a God among mankind?"
"The Prophet answered not,
"His eye rolled round the infinite multitude,
"And into tears he burst.
"Sudden an uproar rose,
"A cry of joy below,
"The Messenger is come!
"Kail from Mecca comes,
"He brings the boon obtained!"
"Forth as we went we saw where overhead
"There hung a deep black cloud,
"On which the multitude
"With joyful eyes looked up
"And blest the coming rain.
"The Messenger addrest the King
"And told his tale of joy.
"To Mecca I repaired,
"By the Red Hillock knelt
"And called on God for rain.
"My prayer ascended and was heard;
"Three clouds appeared in heaven.
"One white, and like the flying cloud of noon,
"One red as it had drunk the evening beams,
"One black and heavy with its load of rain.
"A voice went forth from heaven
"Chuse Kail of the three!"
"I thanked the gracious Power,
"And chose the black cloud, heavy with its wealth."
"Right! right! a thousand tongues exclaimed,
"And all was merriment and joy.
"Then stood the Prophet up and cried aloud,
"Woe, woe, to Irem! woe to Ad!
"DEATH is gone up into her palaces!
"Woe! woe! a day of guilt and punishment,
"A day of desolation!"
"As he spake
"His large eye rolled in horror, and so deep
"His tone, it seemed some Spirit from within
"Breathed thro' his moveless lips the unearthly voice.
"All looks were turned to him. "O Ad!" he cried,
"Dear native land, by all rememberances
"Of childhood, by all joys of manhood dear;
"O Vale of many Waters! morn and night
"My age must groan for you, and to the grave
"Go down in sorrow. Thou wilt give thy fruits,
"But who shall gather them? thy grapes will ripen,
"But who shall tread the wine-press? Fly the wrath,
"Ye who would live and save your souls alive!
"For strong is his right hand that bends the Bow,
"The Arrows that he shoots are sharp,
"And err not from their aim!"
"With that, a faithful few
"Prest thro' the throng to join him. Then arose
"Mockery and mirth; "go bald head!" and they mixed
"Curses with laughter. He set forth, yet once
"Looked back,--his eye fell on me, and he called
"Aswad!" again he called,... and I almost
"Had followed him. O moment fled too soon!
"O moment irrecoverably lost!
"The shouts of mockery made a coward of me;
"He went, and I remained, in fear of MAN!"
"He went, and darker grew
"The deepening cloud above.
"At length it opened, and.... O God! O God!
"There were no waters there!
"There fell no kindly rain!
"The Sarsar from its womb went forth,
"They fell around me, thousands fell around,
"The King and all his People fell.
"All! all! they perished all!
"There came a Voice to me and said,
"In the fearful Hour of Judgement,
"God hath remembered thee."
"When from an agony of prayer I rose
"And from the scene of death
"Attempted to go forth,
"The way was open, I beheld
"No barrier to my steps.
"But round these bowers the Arm of God
"Had drawn a mighty chain,
"A barrier that no human force might break.
"Twice I essayed to pass.
"With that the voice was heard,
"O Aswad be content, and bless the Lord!
"One righteous deed hath saved
"Thy soul from utter death.
"O Aswad, sinful man!
"When by long penitence
"Thou feelest thy soul prepared,
"Breathe up the wish to die,
"And Azrael comes, obedient to the prayer."
"A miserable man
"From Earth and Heaven shut out,
"I heard the dreadful voice.
"I looked around my prison place,
"The bodies of the dead were there,
"Where'er I looked they lay.
"They mouldered, mouldered here,...
"Their very bones have crumbled into dust,
"So many years have past!
"So many weary ages have gone by!
"And still I linger here!
"Still groaning with the burthen of my sins
"Have never dared to breathe
"The prayer to be released."
"Oh! who can tell the unspeakable misery
"Of solitude like this!
"No sound hath ever reached my ear
"Save of the passing wind....
"The fountain's everlasting flow;
"The forest in the gale,
"The pattering of the shower,
"Sounds dead and mournful all.
"No bird hath ever closed her wing
"Upon these solitary bowers,
"No insect sweetly buzzed amid these groves,
"From all things that have life,
"Save only me, concealed.
"This Tree alone that o'er my head
"Hangs, down its hospitable boughs,
"And bends its whispering leaves
"As tho' to welcome me,
"Seems to partake of life;
"I love it as my friend, my only friend!
"I know not for what ages I have dragged
"This miserable life,
"How often I have seen
"These antient trees renewed,
"What countless generations of mankind
"Have risen and fallen asleep,
"And I remain the same!
"My garment hath not waxed old,
"Nor the sole of my shoe hath worn.
"I dare not breathe the prayer to die,
"O merciful Lord God!...
"But when it is thy will,
"But when I have atoned
"For mine iniquities,
"And sufferings have made pure
"My soul with sin defiled,
"Release me in thine own good time,...
"I will not cease to praise thee, O my God!"
Silence ensued awhile,
Then Zeinab answered him.
"Blessed art thou, O Aswad! for the Lord
"Who saved thy soul from Hell,
"Will call thee to him in his own good time.
"And would that when my heart
"Breathed up the wish to die,
"Azrael might visit me!
"Then would I follow where my babes are gone,
"And join Hodeirah now!"
She ceased, and the rushing of wings
Was heard in the stillness of night,
And Azrael, the Death-Angel stood before them.
His countenance was dark,
Solemn, but not severe,
It awed but struck no terror to the heart.
"Zeinab, thy wish is heard!
"Aswad, thy hour is come!"
They fell upon the ground and blest the voice,
And Azrael from his sword
Let drop the drops of bitterness and death.
"Me too! me too!" young Thalaba exclaimed:
As wild with grief he kissed
His Mother's livid hand,
His Mother's quivering lips,
"O Angel! take me too!
"Son of Hodeirah!" the Death-Angel cried,
"It is not yet the hour.
"Son of Hodeirah, thou art chosen forth
"To do the will of Heaven;
"To avenge thy Father's death,
"The murder of thy race,
"To work the mightiest enterprise
"That mortal man hath wrought.
"Live! and remember Destiny
"Hath marked thee from mankind!"
He ceased, and he was gone.
Young Thalaba looked round,...
The Palace and the groves were seen no more,
He stood amid the Wilderness, alone.
Not in the desert
Wert thou abandoned!
The coexistent fire,
That in the Dens of Darkness burnt for thee,
Burns yet, and yet shall burn.
In the Domdaniel caverns
Before them in the vault,
Blazing unfuelled from the floor of rock,
Ten magic flames arose.
"Burn mystic fires!" Abdaldar cried,
"Burn whilst Hodeirah's dreaded race exist.
"This is the appointed hour,
"The hour that shall secure these dens of night."
"Dim they burn," exclaimed Lobaba,
"Dim they burn, and now they waver!
"Okba lifts the arm of death,
"They waver,... they go out!
"Curse on his hasty hand!"
Khawla exclaimed in wrath,
The woman-fiend exclaimed,
"Curse on his hasty hand, the fool hath failed!
"Eight only are gone out."
A Teraph stood against the cavern side,
A new-born infant's head,
That Khawla at his hour of birth had seized
And from the shoulders wrung.
It stood upon a plate of gold,
An unclean Spirit's name inscribed beneath.
The cheeks were deathy dark,
Dark the dead skin upon the hairless skull;
The lips were bluey pale;
Only the eyes had life,
They gleamed with demon light.
"Tell me!" quoth Khawla, "is the Fire gone out
"That threats the Masters of the Spell?"
The dead lips moved and spake,
"The Fire still burns that threats
"Curse on thee, Okba!" Khawla cried,
As to the den the Sorcerer came,
He bore the dagger in his hand
Hot from the murder of Hodeirah's race.
"Behold those unextinguished flames!
"The fire still burns that threats
"Okba, wert thou weak of heart?
"Okba, wert thou blind of eye?
"Thy fate and ours were on the lot,
"And we believed the lying stars
"That said thy hand might seize the auspicious hour!
"Thou hast let slip the reins of Destiny,...
"Curse thee, curse thee, Okba!"
The Murderer answering said,
"O versed in all enchanted lore,
"Thou better knowest Okba's soul.
"Eight blows I struck, eight home-driven blows,
"Needed no second stroke
"From this envenomed blade.
"Ye frown at me as if the will had failed,
"As if ye did not know
"My double danger from Hodeirah's race,
"The deeper hate I feel,
"The stronger motive that inspired my arm!
"Ye frown as if my hasty fault,
"My ill-directed blow
"Had spared the enemy,
"And not the stars that would not give,
"And not your feeble spells
"That could not force, the sign
"Which of the whole was he!
"Did ye not bid me strike them all?
"Said ye not root and branch should be destroyed?
"I heard Hodeirah's dying groan,
"I heard his Children's shriek of death,
"And sought to consummate the work,
"But o'er the two remaining lives
"A cloud unpierceable had risen,
"A cloud that mocked my searching eyes.
"I would have probed it with the dagger-point,
"The dagger was repelled,
"A Voice came forth and cried
"Son of Perdition, cease! thou canst not change
"What in the Book of Destiny is written."
Khawla to the Teraph turned,
"Tell me where the Prophet's hand
"Hides our destined enemy?"
The dead lips spake again,
"I view the seas, I view the land,
"I search the ocean and the earth!
"Not on Earth his steps are seen."
"A mightier power than we," Lobaba cried,
"Protects our destined foe!
"Look! look! one fire burns dim!
"It quivers! it goes out!"
It quivered, it was quenched.
One flame alone was left,
A pale blue flame that trembled on the earth,
A hovering light upon whose shrinking edge
The darkness seemed to press.
Stronger it grew, and spread
Its lucid swell around,
Extending now where all the ten had stood,
With lustre more than all.
At that protentous sight,
The children of Evil trembled
And Terror smote their souls.
Over the den the fire
Its fearful splendour cast,
The broad base rolling up in wavy streams,
Bright as the summer lightning when it spreads
Its glory o'er the midnight heaven.
The Teraphs eyes were dimmed,
That like two twinkling stars
Shone in the darkness late.
The Sorcerers on each other gazed,
And every face all pale with fear,
And ghastly in that light was seen
Like a dead man's by the sepulchral lamp.
Even Khawla fiercest of the enchanter brood
Not without effort drew
Her fear suspended breath.
Anon a deeper rage
Inflamed her reddening eye.
"Mighty is thy power, Mohammed!"
Loud in blasphemy she cried,
"But Eblis would not stoop to man
"When Man fair statured as the stately palm,
"From his Creator's hand
"Was undefiled and pure.
"Thou art mighty, O Son of Abdallah!
"But who is he of woman born
"That shall vie with the might of Eblis?
"That shall rival the Prince of the Morning?"
She said, and raised her skinny hand
As in defiance to high Heaven,
And stretched her long lean finger forth
And spake aloud the words of power.
The Spirits heard her call,
And lo! before her stands
"Spirit!" the Enchantress cried,
"Where lives the Boy coeval with whose life
"Yon magic fire must burn?"
Mistress of the mighty Spell,
Only eyes that view
Allah's glory throne,
See his hiding-place.
From some believing Spirit, ask and learn.
"Bring the dead Hodeirah here,"
Khawla cried, "and he shall tell."
The Demon heard her bidding, and was gone.
A moment passed, and at her feet
Hodeirah's corpse was laid.
His hand still held the sword he grasped in death,
The blood not yet had clotted on his wound.
The Sorceress looked and with a smile
That kindled to more fiendishness
Her hideous features, cried,
"Where Hodeirah is thy soul?
"Is it in the Zemzem well?
"Is it in the Eden groves?
"Waits it for the judgement-blast
"In the trump of Israfil?
"Is it plumed with silver wings
"Underneath the throne of God?
"Even if beneath his throne
"Hodeirah, thou shalt hear,
"Thou shalt obey my voice!"
She said, and muttered charms that Hell in fear
And Heaven in horror heard.
Soon the stiff eye-balls rolled,
The muscles with convulsive motion shook,
The white lips quivered. Khawla saw, her soul
Exulted, and she cried,
"Prophet! behold my power!
"Not even death secures
"Thy slaves from Khawla's Spell!
"Where Hodeirah is thy child?"
Hodeirah groaned and closed his eyes,
As if in the night and the blindness of death
He would have hid himself.
"Speak to my question!" she exclaimed,
"Or in that mangled body thou shall live
"Ages of torture! answer me!
"Where can we find the Boy?"
"God! God! Hodeirah cried,
"Release me from this life,
"From this intolerable agony!"
"Speak!" cried the Sorceress; and she snatched
A Viper from the floor,
And with the living reptile lashed his neck.
Wreathed, round him with the blow,
The Reptile tighter drew her folds
And raised her wrathful head,
And fixed into his face
Her deadly teeth, and shed
Poison in every wound.
In vain! for Allah heard Hodeirah's prayer,
And Khawla on a corpse
Had wrecked her baffled rage.
The fated fire moved on
And round the Body wrapt its funeral flames.
The flesh and bones in that portentous pile
Consumed; the Sword alone,
Circled with fire was left.
Where is the Boy for whose hand it is destined?
Where the Destroyer who one day shall wield
The Sword that is circled with fire?
Race accursed, try your charms!
Masters of the mighty Spell,
Mutter o'er your words of power!
Ye can shatter the dwellings of man,
Ye can open the womb of the rock,
Ye can shake the foundations of earth,
But not one letter can ye change
Of what his Will hath written!
Who shall seek thro' Araby
Hodeirah's dreaded son?
They mingle the Arrows of Chance
The lot of Abdaldar is drawn.
Thirteen moons must wax and wane
Ere the Sorcerer quit his quest.
He must visit every tribe
That roam the desert wilderness,
Or dwell beside perennial streams;
Nor leave a solitary tent unsearched
Till he has found the Boy,
The hated Boy whose blood alone
Can quench that dreaded fire.
A crystal ring Abdaldar bore,
The powerful gem condensed
Primeval dews that upon Caucasus
Felt the first winter's frost.
Ripening there it lay beneath
Rock above rock, and mountain ice up-piled
On mountain, till the incumbent mass assumed,
So huge its bulk, the Ocean's azure hue.
With this he sought the inner den
Where burnt the eternal flame.
Like waters gushing from some channelled rock
Full thro' a narrow opening, from a chasm
The eternal flame streamed up.
No eye beheld the fount
Of that up-flowing flame,
That blazed self-nurtured, and for ever, there.
It was no mortal element: the Abyss
Supplied it, from the fountains at the first
Prepared. In the heart of earth it lives and glows
Her vital heat, till at the day decreed,
The voice of God shall let its billows loose,
To deluge o'er with no abating flood
The consummated World;
That thenceforth thro' the air must roll,
The penal Orb of Fire.
Unturbaned and unsandalled there,
Abdaldar stood before the flame,
And held the Ring beside, and spake
The language that the Elements obey.
The obedient flame detatched a portion forth,
That, in the crystal entering, was condensed,
Gem of the gem, its living Eye of fire.
When the hand that wears the spell
Shall touch the destined Boy,
Then shall that Eye be quenched,
And the freed Element
Fly to its sacred and remembered Spring.
Over the sands of the scorching Tchama,
Over the waterless mountains of Naid,
In Arud pursue him; and Yemen the happy,
And Hejaz, the country beloved by believers.
From tribe to tribe, from town to town,
From tent to tent, Abdaldar past.
Him every morn the all-beholding Eye
Saw from his couch, unhallowed by a prayer,
Rise to the scent of blood,
And every night lie down.
That rankling hope within him, that by day
Goaded his steps, still stinging him in sleep,
And startling him with vain accomplishment
From visions still the same.
Many a time his wary hand
To many a youth applied the Ring,
And still the dagger in his mantle hid
Was ready for the deed.
At length to the cords of a tent
That were stretched by an Island of Palms
In the desolate sea of the sands,
The weary traveller came.
Under a shapely palm,
Herself as shapely, there a Damsel stood.
She held her ready robe
And looked towards a Boy,
Who from the tree above
With one hand clinging to its trunk,
Cast with the other down the clustered dates.
The Wizard approached the Tree,
He leaned on his staff, like a way-faring man,
And the sweat of his travel was seen on his brow.
He asks for food, and lo!
The Damsel proffers him her lap of dates.
And the Stripling descends, and runs into the tent
And brings him forth water, the draught of delight.
Anon the Master of the tent,
The Father of the family
Came forth, a man in years, of aspect mild.
To the stranger approaching he gave
The friendly saluting of peace,
And bade the skin be spread.
Before the tent they spread the skin,
Under a Tamarind's shade,
That bending forward, stretched
Its boughs of beauty far.
They brought the Traveller rice,
With no false colours tinged to tempt the eye,
But white as the new-fallen snow,
When never yet the sullying Sun
Hath seen its purity,
Nor the warm Zephyr touched and tainted it.
The dates of the grove before their guest
They laid, and the luscious fig,
And water from the well.
The Damsel from the Tamarind tree
Had plucked its acid fruit
And steeped it in water long;
And whoso drank of the cooling draught
He would not wish for wine.
This to the guest the Damsel brought,
And a modest pleasure kindled her cheek,
When raising from the cup his moistened lips
The Stranger smiled, and praised, and drank again.
Whither is gone the Boy?
He had pierced the Melon's pulp
And closed with wax the wound,
And he had duly gone at morn
And watched its ripening rind,
And now all joyfully he brings
The treasure now matured.
His dark eyes sparkle with a boy's delight.
As he pours out its liquid lusciousness
And proffers to the guest.
Abdaldar ate, and he was satisfied:
And now his tongue discoursed
Of regions far remote,
As one whose busy feet had travelled long.
The Father of the family,
With a calm eye and quiet smile,
Sate pleased to hearken him.
The Damsel who removed the meal,
She loitered on the way
And listened with full hands
A moment motionless.
All eagerly the Boy
Watches the Traveller's lips,
And still the wily man
With seemly kindness to the eager Boy
Directs his winning tale.
Ah, cursed man! if this be he,
If thou hast found the object of thy search,
Thy hate, thy bloody aim,
Into what deep damnation wilt thou plunge
Thy miserable soul!
Look! how his eye delighted watches thine!
Look! how his open lips
Gasp at the winning tale!
And nearer now he comes
To lose no word of that delightful talk.
Then, as in familiar mood,
Upon the Stripling's arm
The Sorcerer laid his hand,
And the fire of the Crystal fled.
Whilst the sudden shoot of joy
Made pale Abdaldar's cheek,
The Master's voice was heard:
"It is the hour of prayer,...
"My children, let us purify ourselves
"And praise the Lord our God!"
The Boy the water brought,
After the law they purified themselves,
And bent their faces to the earth in prayer.
All, save Abdaldar; over Thalaba
He stands, and lifts the dagger to destroy.
Before his lifted arm received
Its impulse to descend,
The Blast of the Desert came.
Prostrate in prayer, the pious family
Felt not the Simoom pass.
They rose, and lo! the Sorcerer lying dead,
Holding the dagger in his blasted hand.
Oneiza, look! the dead man has a ring,...
Should it be buried with him?
A wicked man! all that he has must needs
Be wicked too!
But see,... the sparkling stone!
How it has caught the glory of the Sun,
And streams it back again in lines of light!
Why do you take it from him Thalaba?...
And look at it so near?... it may have charms
To blind, or poison ... throw it in the grave!...
I would not touch it!
And around its rim
Strange letters,...
It is not written as the Koran is;
Some other tongue perchance ... the accursed man
Said he had been a traveller.
MOATH. _coming from the tent._
What hast thou there?
A ring the dead man wore,
Perhaps my father, you can read its meaning.
No Boy,... the letters are not such as ours.
Heap the sand over it! a wicked man
Wears nothing holy.
Nay! not bury it!
It may be that some traveller who shall enter
Our tent, may read them: or if we approach
Cities where strangers dwell and learned men,
They may interpret.
It were better hid
Under the desert sands. This wretched man,
Whom God hath smitten in the very purpose
And impulse of his unpermitted crime,
Belike was some Magician, and these lines
Are of the language that the Demons use.
Bury it! bury it ... dear Thalaba!
Such cursed men there are upon the earth,
In league and treaty with the Evil powers,
The covenanted enemies of God
And of all good, dear purchase have they made
Of rule, and riches, and their life-long sway,
Masters, yet slaves of Hell. Beneath the Roots
Of Ocean, the Domdaniel caverns lie:
Their impious meeting; there they learn the words
Unutterable by man who holds his hope
Of Heaven, there brood the Pestilence, and let
The Earthquake loose.
And he who would have killed me
Was one of these?
I know not, but it may be
That on the Table of Destiny, thy name
Is written their Destroyer, and for this
Thy life by yonder miserable man
So sought; so saved by interfering Heaven.
His ring has some strange power then?
Every gem,
So sages say, has virtue; but the science
Of difficult attainment, some grow pale
Conscious of poison, or with sudden shade
Of darkness, warn the wearer; same preserve
From spells, or blunt the hostile weapon's edge.
Some open rocks and mountains, and lay bare
Their buried treasures; others make the sight
Strong to perceive the presence of all Beings
Thro' whose pure substance the unaided eye
Passes, like empty air ... and in yon stone
I deem some such misterious quality.
My father, I will wear it.
In God's name, and the Prophet's! be its power
Good, let it serve the righteous: if for evil,
God and my trust in him shall hallow it.
So Thalaba drew on
The written ring of gold.
Then in the hollow grave
They laid Abdaldar's corpse,
And levelled over him the desert dust.
The Sun arose, ascending from beneath
The horizon's circling line.
As Thalaba to his ablutions went,
Lo! the grave open, and the corpse exposed!
It was not that the winds of night
Had swept away the sands that covered it,
For heavy with the undried dew
The desert dust was dark and close around;
And the night air had been so moveless calm,
It had not from the grove
Shaken a ripe date down.
Amazed to hear the tale
Forth from the tent came Moath and his child.
Awhile the thoughtful man surveyed the corpse
Silent with downward eyes,
Then turning spake to Thalaba and said,
"I have heard that there are places by the abode
"Of holy men, so holily possessed,
"That if a corpse be buried there, the ground
"With a convulsive effort shakes it out,
"Impatient of pollution. Have the feet
"Of Prophet or Apostle blest this place?
"Ishmael, or Houd, or Saleh, or than all,
"Mohammed, holier name? or is the man
"So foul with magic and all blasphemy,
"That Earth like Heaven rejects him? it is best
"Forsake the station. Let us strike our tent.
"The place is tainted ... and behold
"The Vulture hovers yonder, and his scream
"Chides us that we still we scare him from his banquet.
"So let the accursed one
"Find fitting sepulchre."
Then from the pollution of death
With water they made themselves pure,
And Thalaba drew up
The fastening of the cords,
And Moath furled the tent,
And from the grove of palms Oneiza led
The Camels, ready to receive their load.
The dews had ceased to steam
Towards the climbing Sun,
When from the Isle of Palms they went their way.
And when the Sun had reached his southern height,
As back they turned their eyes,
The distant Palms arose
Like to the top-sails of some far-off fleet
Distinctly seen, where else
The Ocean bounds had blended with the sky.
And when the eve came on
The sight returning reached the grove no more.
They planted the pole of their tent,
And they laid them down to repose.
At midnight Thalaba started up,
For he felt that the ring on his finger was moved.
He called on Allah aloud,
And he called on the Prophet's name.
Moath arose in alarm,
"What ails thee Thalaba?" he cried,
"Is the Robber of night at hand?"
"Dost thou not see," the youth exclaimed,
Moath looked round and said,
"The moon beam shines in the Tent,
"I see thee stand in the light,
"And thy shadow is black on the ground."
Thalaba answered not.
"Spirit!" he cried, "what brings thee here?
"In the name of the Prophet, speak,
"In the name of Allah, obey!"
He ceased, and there was silence in the Tent.
"Dost thou not hear?" quoth Thalaba.
The listening man replied,
"I hear the wind, that flaps
"The curtain of the Tent.
"The Ring! the Ring!" the youth exclaimed.
"For that the Spirit of Evil comes,
"By that I see, by that I hear.
"In the name of God, I ask thee
"Who was he that slew my Father?"
Master of the powerful Ring!
Okba, the wise Magician, did the deed.
Where does the Murderer dwell?
In the Domdaniel caverns
Why were my Father and my brethren slain?
We knew from the race of Hodeirah
The destined destroyer would come.
Bring me my father's sword.
A fire surrounds the fated-sword,
No Spirit or Magician's hand
Can pierce that guardian flame.
Bring me his bow and his arrows.
Distinctly Moath heard his voice, and She
Who thro' the Veil of Separation, watched
All sounds in listening terror, whose suspense
Forbade the aid of prayer.
They heard the voice of Thalaba;
But when the Spirit spake, the motionless air
Felt not the subtle sounds,
Too fine for mortal sense.
On a sudden the rattle of arrows was heard,
And the quiver was laid at the feet of the youth,
And in his hand they saw Hodeirah's Bow.
He eyed the Bow, he twanged the string,
And his heart bounded to the joyous tone.
Anon he raised his voice, and cried
"Go thy way, and never more,
"Evil Spirit, haunt our tent!
"By the virtue of the Ring,
"By Mohammed's holier might,
"By the holiest name of God,
"I adjure and I command
"Never more to trouble us!"
Nor ever from that hour
Did rebel Spirit on the Tent intrude,
Such virtue had the Spell.
And peacefully the vernal years
Of Thalaba past on.
Till now without an effort he could bend
Hodeirah's stubborn Bow.
Black were his eyes and bright,
The sunny hue of health
Glowed on his tawny cheek,
His lip was darkened by maturing life;
Strong were his shapely limbs, his stature tall;
He was a comely youth.
Compassion for the child
Had first old Moath's kindly heart possessed,
An orphan, wailing in the wilderness.
But when he heard his tale, his wonderous tale,
Told by the Boy with such eye-speaking truth,
Now with sudden bursts of anger,
Now in the agony of tears,
And now in flashes of prophetic joy.
What had been pity became reverence,
And like a sacred trust from Heaven
The old man cherished him.
Now with a father's love,
Child of his choice, he loved the Boy,
And like a father to the Boy was dear.
Oneiza called him brother, and the youth,
More fondly than a brother, loved the maid,
The loveliest of Arabian maidens she.
How happily the years
Of Thalaba went by!
It was the wisdom and the will of Heaven
That in a lonely tent had cast
There might his soul develope best
Its strengthening energies;
There might he from the world
Keep his heart pure and uncontaminate,
Till at the written hour he should be found
Fit servant of the Lord, without a spot.
Years of his youth, how rapidly ye fled
In that beloved solitude!
Is the morn fair, and does the freshening breeze
Flow with cool current o'er his cheek?
Lo! underneath the broad-leaved sycamore
With lids half closed he lies,
Dreaming of days to come.
His dog beside him, in mute blandishment,
Now licks his listless hand,
Now lifts an anxious and expectant eye
Courting the wonted caress.
Or comes the Father of the Rains
From his Caves in the uttermost West,
Comes he in darkness and storms?
When the blast is loud,
When the waters fill
The Travellers tread in the sands,
When the pouring shower
Streams adown the roof,
When the door-curtain hangs in heavier folds,
When the outstrained tent flags loosely,
Comfort is within,
The embers chearful glow,
The sound of the familiar voice,
The song that lightens toil.
Under the common shelter on dry sand
The quiet Camels ruminate their food;
From Moath falls the lengthening cord,
As patiently the old Man
Intwines the strong palm-fibers; by the hearth
The Damsel shakes the coffee-grains,
That with warm fragrance fill the tent;
And while with dextrous fingers, Thalaba
Shapes the green basket, haply at his feet
Her favourite kidling gnaws the twig,
Forgiven plunderer, for Oneiza's sake!
Or when the winter torrent rolls
Down the deep-channelled rain-course, foamingly,
Dark with its mountain spoils,
With bare feet pressing the wet sand
There wanders Thalaba,
The rushing flow, the flowing roar,
Filling his yielded faculties;
A vague, a dizzy, a tumultuous joy.
... Or lingers it a vernal brook
Gleaming o'er yellow sands?
Beneath the lofty bank reclined,
With idle eye he views its little waves,
Quietly listening to the quiet flow;
While in the breathings of the stirring gale
The tall canes bend above,
Floating like streamers on the wind
Their lank uplifted leaves.
Nor rich, nor poor, was Moath; God had given
Enough, and blest him with a mind content.
No hoarded gold disquieted his dreams;
But ever round his station he beheld
Camels that knew his voice,
And home-birds, grouping at Oneiza's call,
And goats that, morn and eve,
Came with full udders to the Damsel's hand.
Dear child! the Tent beneath whose shade they dwelt
That was her work; and she had twined
His girdle's many-hues;
And he had seen his robe
Grow in Oneiza's loom.
How often with a memory-mingled joy
That made her Mother live before his sight,
He watched her nimble finders thread the woof!
Or at the hand-mill when she knelt and toiled,
Tost the thin cake on spreading palm,
Or fixed it on the glowing oven's side
With bare wet arm, in safe dexterity.
'Tis the cool evening hour:
The Tamarind from the dew
Sheaths its young fruit, yet green.
Before their Tent the mat is spread,
The old man's aweful voice
Intones the holy Book.
What if beneath no lamp-illumined dome,
Its marble walls bedecked with flourished truth,
Azure and gold adornment? sinks the Word
With deeper influence from the Imam's voice,
Where in the day of congregation, crowds
Perform the duty task?
Their Father is their Priest,
The Stars of Heaven their point of prayer,
And the blue Firmament
The glorious Temple, where they feel
The present Deity.
Yet thro' the purple glow of eve
Shines dimly the white moon.
The slackened bow, the quiver, the long lance,
Rest on the pillar of the Tent.
Knitting light palm-leaves for her brother's brow
The dark-eyed damsel sits;
The Old Man tranquilly
Up his curled pipe inhales
The tranquillizing herb.
So listen they the reed of Thalaba,
While his skilled fingers modulate
The low, sweet, soothing, melancholy tones,
Or if he strung the pearls of Poetry
Singing with agitated face
And eloquent arms, and sobs that reach the heart,
A tale of love and woe;
Then, if the brightening Moon that lit his face
In darkness favoured her's,
Oh! even with such a look, as, fables say,
The mother Ostrich fixes on her egg,
Till that intense affection
Kindle its light of life,
Even in such deep and breathless tenderness
Oneiza's soul is centered on the youth,
So motionless with such an ardent gaze,
Save when from her full eyes
Quickly she wipes away the gushing tears
That dim his image there.
She called him brother: was it sister-love
That made the silver rings
Round her smooth ankles and her twany arms,
Shine daily brightened? for a brother's eye
Were her long fingers tinged,
As when she trimmed the lamp,
And thro' the veins and delicate skin
The light shone rosy? that the darkened lids
Gave yet a softer lustre to her eye?
That with such pride she tricked
Her glossy tresses, and on holy day
Wreathed the red flower-crown round their jetty waves?
How happily the years
Of Thalaba went by!
Yet was the heart of Thalaba
Impatient of repose;
Restless he pondered still
The task for him decreed,
The mighty and mysterious work announced.
Day by day with youthful ardour
He the call of Heaven awaits,
And oft in visions o'er the Murderer's head
He lifts the avenging arm,
And oft in dreams he sees
The Sword that is circled with fire.
One morn as was their wont, in sportive mood
The youth and damsel bent Hodeirah's bow,
For with no feeble hand nor erring aim
Oneiza could let loose the obedient shaft.
With head back-bending, Thalaba
Shot up the aimless arrow high in air,
Whose line in vain the aching sight pursued
Lost in the depth of heaven.
"When will the hour arrive," exclaimed the youth,
"That I shall aim these fated shafts
"To vengeance long delayed?
"Have I not strength, my father, for the deed?
"Or can the will of Providence
"Be mutable like man?
"Shall I never be called to the task?"
"Impatient boy!" quoth Moath, with a smile:
"Impatient Thalaba!" Oneiza cried,
And she too smiled, but in her smile
A mild reproachful melancholy mixed.
Then 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 a broad river, headlong in its course
Plunged from a mountain summit, or the roar
Of a wild ocean in the autumn 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.
"Behold the mighty army!" Moath cried,
"Blindly they move, impelled
"By the blind Element.
"And yonder Birds our welcome visitants,
"Lo! where they soar above the embodied host,
"Pursue their way, and hang upon their rear,
"And thin their spreading flanks,
"Rejoicing o'er their banquet! deemest thou
"The scent of water, on the Syrian mosque
"Placed with priest-mummery, and the jargon-rites
"That fool the multitude, has led them here
"From far Khorasan? Allah who decreed
"Yon tribe the plague and punishment of man,
"These also hath he doomed to meet their way:
"Both passive instruments
"Of his all-acting will,
"Sole mover he, and only spring of all."
While thus he spake, Oneiza's eye looks up
Where one towards her flew,
Satiate, for so it seemed, with sport and food.
The Bird flew over her,
And as he past above,
From his relaxing grasp a Locust fell....
It fell upon the Maiden's robe,
And feebly there it stood, recovering slow.
The admiring girl surveyed
His out-spread sails of green.
His gauzy underwings,
One closely to the grass green body furled,
One ruffled in the fall, and half unclosed.
She viewed his jet-orbed eyes
His glossy gorget bright
Green-glittering in the sun;
His plumy pliant horns
That, nearer as she gazed,
Bent tremblingly before her breath.
She viewed his yellow-circled front
With lines mysterious veined;
"And knowest thou what is written here,
"My father?" said the Maid.
"Look Thalaba! perchance these lines
"Are in the letters of the Ring,
"Nature's own language written here."
The youth bent down, and suddenly
He started, and his heart
Sprung, and his cheek grew red,
For the mysterious lines were legible,
And Moath looked, and read the lines aloud;
The Locust shook his wings and fled,
And they were silent all.
Who then rejoiced but Thalaba?
Who then was troubled but the Arabian Maid?
And Moath sad of heart,
Tho' with a grief supprest, beheld the youth
Sharpen his arrows now,
And now new-plume their shafts,
Now to beguile impatient hope
Feel every sharpened point.
"Why is that anxious look," Oneiza cried,
"Still upwards cast at noon?
"Is Thalaba aweary of our tent?"
"I would be gone," the youth replied,
"That I might do my task,
"And full of glory to the tent return
"Whence I should part no more."
But on the noontide sun,
As anxious and as oft Oneiza's eye
Was upward glanced in fear.
And now as Thalaba replied, her cheek
Lost its fresh and lively hue,
For in the Sun's bright edge
She saw, or thought she saw, a little speck.
The sage Astronomer
Who with the love of science full
Trembled that day at every passing cloud,
He had not seen it, 'twas a speck so small.
Alas! Oneiza sees the spot increase!
And lo! the ready Youth
Over his shoulder the full quiver slings
And grasps the slackened bow.
It spreads, and spreads, and now
Has shaddowed half the Sun,
Whose crescent-pointed horns
Now momently decrease.
The day grows dark, the Birds retire to rest;
Forth from her shadowy haunt
Flies the large-headed Screamer of the night.
Far off the affrighted African,
Deeming his God deceased,
Falls on his knees in prayer,
And trembles as he sees
The fierce Hyena's eyes
Glare in the darkness of that dreadful noon.
Then Thalaba exclaimed, "Farewell,
"My father! my Oneiza!" the Old Man
Felt his throat swell with grief.
"Where wilt thou go my Child?" he cried,
"Wilt thou not wait a sign
"To point thy destined way?"
"God will conduct me!" said the noble youth,
He said and from the Tent
In the depth of the darkness departed.
They heard his parting steps,
The quiver rattling as he past away.
Whose is yon dawning form,
That in the darkness meets
The delegated youth?
Dim as the shadow of a fire at noon,
Or pale reflection on the evening brook
Of Glow-worm on the bank
Kindled to guide her winged paramour.
A moment, and the brightening image shaped
His Mother's form and features. "Go," she cried,
"To Babylon, and from the Angels learn
"What talisman thy task requires."
The Spirit hung towards him when she ceased,
As tho' with actual lips she would have given
A mother's kiss ... his arms outstretched,
His body bending on,
His lips unclosed and trembling into speech
He prest to meet the blessing,... but the wind
Played on his cheek: he looked, and he beheld
The darkness close. "Again! again!" he cried,
"Let me again behold thee!" from the darkness
His Mother's voice went forth;
"Thou shall behold me in the hour of death."
Day dawns, the twilight gleam dilates,
The Sun comes forth and like a God
Rides thro' rejoicing heaven.
Old Moath and his daughter from their tent
Beheld the adventurous youth,
Dark moving o'er the sands,
A lessening image, trembling thro' their tears.
Visions of high emprize
Beguiled his lonely road;
And if sometimes to Moath's tent
The involuntary mind recurred,
Fancy, impatient of all painful thoughts
Pictured the bliss should welcome his return.
In dreams like these he went,
And still of every dream
Oneiza formed a part,
And Hope and Memory made a mingled joy.
In the eve he arrived at a Well,
The Acacia bent over its side,
Under whose long light-hanging boughs
He chose his night's abode.
There, due ablutions made and prayers performed,
The youth his mantle spread,
And silently produced
His solitary meal.
The silence and the solitude recalled
Dear recollections, and with folded arms,
Thinking of other days, he sate, till thought
Had left him, and the Acacia's moving shade
Upon the sunny sand
Had caught his idle eye,
And his awakened ear
Heard the grey Lizard's chirp,
The only sound of life.
As thus in vacant quietness he sate,
A Traveller on a Camel reached the Well,
And courteous greeting gave.
The mutual salutation past,
He by the cistern too his garment spread,
And friendly converse cheered the social meal.
The Stranger was an antient man,
Yet one whose green old age
Bore the fair characters of temperate youth.
So much of manhood's strength his limbs retained,
It seemed he needed not the staff he bore.
His beard was long, and grey, and crisp;
Lively his eyes and quick,
And reaching over them
The large broad eye-brow curled....
His speech was copious, and his winning words
Enriched with knowledge, that the attentive youth
Sate listening with a thirsty joy.
So in the course of talk
The adventurer youth enquired
Whither his course was bent;
The Old Man answered, "to Bagdad I go."
At that so welcome sound a flash of joy
"And I too," he replied,
"Am journeying thitherward,
"Let me become companion of thy way!"
Courteous the Old Man smiled,
And willing in assent....
Son, thou art young for travel.
I never past the desert boundary.
It is a noble city that we seek.
Thou wilt behold magnificent palaces,
And lofty obelisks, and high-domed Mosques,
And rich Bazars, whither from all the world
Industrious merchants meet, and market there
The World's collected wealth.
Near to the site of ancient Babylon
And Nimrod's impious temple?
From the walls
'Tis but a long day's distance.
And the ruins?
A mighty mass remains; enough to tell us
How great our fathers were, how little we.
Men are not what they were; their crimes and follies
Have dwarfed them down from the old hero race
To such poor things as we!
I have heard the Angels expiate their guilt,
'Tis a history
Handed from ages down; the nurses make it
A tale to please their children,
And as their garrulous ignorance relates
We learn it and believe ... but all things feel
The power of Time and Change! thistles and grass
Usurp the desolate palace, and the weeds
Of Falshood root in the aged pile of Truth.
How have you heard the tale?
Thus ... on a time
The Angels at the wickedness of man
Expressed indignant wonder: that in vain
Tokens and signs were given, and Prophets sent,...
Strange obstinacy this! a stubborness
Of sin, they said, that should for ever bar
The gates of mercy on them. Allah heard
Their unforgiving pride, and bade that two
Of these untempted Spirits should descend,
Judges on earth. Haruth and Maruth went,
The chosen Sentencers; they fairly heard
The appeals of men to their tribunal brought,
And rightfully decided. At the length
A Woman came before them ... beautiful
Zohara was, as yonder Evening star,
In the mild lustre of whose lovely light
Even now her beauty shines. They gazed on her
With fleshly eyes, they tempted her to sin.
The wily woman listened, and required
A previous price, the knowledge of the name
Of God. She learnt the wonder-working name
And gave it utterance, and its virtue bore her
Up to the glorious Presence, and she told
Before the aweful Judgement-Seat, her tale.
I know the rest, the accused Spirits were called:
Unable of defence, and penitent,
They owned their crime and heard the doom deserved.
Then they besought the Lord that not for ever
His wrath might be upon them; and implored
That penal ages might at length restore them
Clean from offence, since then by Babylon
In the cavern of their punishment they dwell,
Runs the conclusion so?
So I am taught.
The common tale! and likely thou hast heard
How that the bold and bad, with impious rites
Intrude upon their penitence, and force,
Albeit from loathing and reluctant lips,
The sorcery-secret?
Is it not the truth?
Son, thou hast seen the Traveller in the sands
Move in the dizzy light of the hot noon,
Huge as the giant race of elder times,
And his Camel, than the monstrous Elephant,
Seem of a vaster bulk.
A frequent sight.
And hast thou never in the twilight, fancied
Familiar object into some strange shape
And form uncouth?
Aye! many a time.
Things viewed at distance thro' the mist of fear,
In their distortion terrify and shock
The abused sight.
But of these Angels fate
Thus in the uncreated Book is written.
Wisely from legendary fables, Heaven
Inculcates wisdom.
How then is the truth?
Is not the dungeon of their punishment
By ruined Babylon?
Haruth and Maruth may be found.
And there
Magician learn their impious sorcery?
Son what thou sayest is true, and it is false.
But night approaches fast; I have travelled far
And my old lids are heavy ... on our way
We shall have hours for converse, let us now
Turn to our due repose. Son, peace be with thee!
So in his loosened cloak
The Old Man wrapt himself
And laid his limbs at length:
And Thalaba in silence laid him down.
Awhile he lay and watched the lovely Moon,
O'er whose broad orb the boughs
A mazy fretting framed,
Or with a pale transparent green
Lighting the restless leaves,
The thin Acacia leaves that played above.
The murmuring wind, the moving leaves
Lulled him to sleep with mingled lullabies.
Not so the dark Magician by his side,
Lobaba, who from the Domdaniel caves
Had sought the dreaded youth.
Silent he lay, and simulating sleep,
Till by the long and regular breath he knew
The youth beside him slept.
Carefully then he rose,
And bending over him, surveyed him near
And secretly he cursed
The dead Abdaldar's ring,
Armed by whose amulet
He slept from danger safe.
Wrapped in his mantle Thalaba reposed,
His loose right arm pillowing his head.
Whose crystal gem returned
A quiet, moveless light.
Vainly the Wizard vile put forth his hand
And strove to reach the gem,
Charms strong as hell could make them, made it safe.
He called his servant fiends,
He bade the Genii rob the sleeping youth.
By the virtue of the Ring,
By Mohammed's holier power,
By the holiest name of God,
Had Thalaba disarmed the evil race.
Baffled and weary, and convinced at length,
Anger, and fear, and rancour gnawing him,
The accursed Sorcerer ceased his vain attempts.
Content perforce to wait
Temptations likelier aid.
Restless he lay, and brooding many a wile,
And tortured with impatient hope,
And envying with the bitterness of hate
The innocent youth, who slept so sweetly by.
The ray of morning on his eye lids fell,
And Thalaba awoke
And folded his mantle around him,
And girded his loins for the day;
Then the due rites of holiness observed.
His comrade too arose,
And with the outward forms
Of righteousness and prayer insulted God.
They filled their water skin, they gave
The Camel his full draught.
Then on their road while yet the morn was young
And the air was fresh with dew,
Forward the travellers went,
With various talk beguiling the long way.
But soon the youth, whose busy mind
Dwelt on Lobaba's wonder-stirring words,
Renewed the unfinished converse of the night.
Thou saidest that it is true, and yet is false,
That men accurst, attain at Babylon
Forbidden knowledge from the Angel pair....
How mean you?
All things have a double power,
Alike for good and evil, the same fire
That on the comfortable hearth at eve
Warmed the good man, flames o'er the house at night
Should we for this forego
The needful element?
Because the scorching summer Sun
Darts fever, wouldst thou quench the orb of day?
Or deemest thou that Heaven in anger formed
Iron to till the field, because when man
Had tipt his arrows for the chase, he rushed
A murderer to the war?
What follows hence?
That nothing in itself is good or evil,
But only in its use. Think you the man
Praiseworthy who by painful study learns
The knowledge of all simples, and their power
Healing or harmful?
All men hold in honour
The skilful Leech. From land to land he goes
Safe in his privilege; the sword of war
Spares him, Kings welcome him with costly gifts,
And he who late had from the couch of pain
Lifted a languid look to him for aid,
Views him with brightened eyes, and blesses him
In his first thankful prayer.
Yet some there are
Who to the purposes of wickedness,
Apply this knowledge, and from herbs distil
Poison to mix it in the trusted draught.
Allah shall cast them in the fire
Whose fuel is the cursed! there shall they
Endure the ever-burning agony
Consuming still in flames, and still renewed.
But is their knowledge therefore in itself
That were foolishness to think.
O what a glorious animal were Man,
Knew he but his own powers! and knowing gave them
Room for their growth and spread! the Horse obeys
His guiding will, the patient Camel bears him
Over these wastes of sand, the Pigeon wafts
His bidding thro' the sky: and with these triumphs
He rests contented! with these ministers,
When he might awe the Elements, and make
Myriads of Spirits serve him!
But as how!
By a league with Hell, a covenant that binds
The soul to utter death!
Accurst of God? yet to his talismans
Obedient, o'er his throne the birds of Heaven
Their waving wings his sun-shield, fanned around him
The motionless air of noon: from place to place,
As his will reined the viewless Element
He rode the Wind: the Genii reared his temple,
And ceaselessly in fear while his dead eye
O'erlooked them, day and night pursued their toil,
So dreadful was his power.
But 'twas from Heaven
His wisdom came; God's special gift ... the guerdon
Of early virtue.
Learn thou, O young man!
God hath appointed Wisdom the reward
Of study! 'tis a spring of living waters,
Whose inexhaustible bounties all might drink
But few dig deep enough. Son! thou art silent,...
Perhaps I say too much,... perhaps offend thee.
Nay, I am young, and willingly as becomes me,
Hear the wise words of age.
Is it a crime
To mount the horse, because forsooth thy feet
Can serve thee for the journey? is it sin
Because the Hern soars upward in the sky
Above the arrow's flight, to train the Falcon
Whose beak shall pierce him there? the powers which All
Granted to man, were granted for his use;
All knowledge that befits not human weakness
Is placed beyond its reach.... They who repair
To Babylon, and from the Angels learn
Mysterious wisdom, sin not in the deed.
Know you these secrets?
I? alas my Son
My age just knows enough to understand
How little all its knowledge! later years
Sacred to study, teach me to regret
Youth's unforeseeing indolence, and hours
That cannot be recalled! something I know:
The properties of herbs, and have sometimes
Brought to the afflicted comfort and relief
By the secrets of my art; under His blessing
Without whom all had failed! Also of Gems
I have some knowledge, and the characters
That tell beneath what aspect they were set.
Belike you can interpret then the graving
Around this Ring?
My sight is feeble, Son,
And I must view it closer, let me try!
The unsuspecting Youth
Held forth his linger to draw off the spell.
Even whilst he held it forth,
There settled there a Wasp,
And just above the Gem infixed its dart.
All purple swoln the hot and painful flesh
Rose round the tightened Ring.
The baffled Sorcerer knew the hand of Heaven,
And inwardly blasphemed.
Ere long Lobaba's heart,
Fruitful in wiles, devised new stratagem.
A mist arose at noon;
Like the loose hanging skirts
Of some low cloud that, by the breeze impelled,
Sweeps o'er the mountain side.
With joy the thoughtless youth
That grateful shadowing hailed;
For grateful was the shade,
While thro' the silver-lighted haze
Guiding their way, appeared the beamless Sun.
But soon that beacon failed;
A heavier mass of cloud
Impenetrably deep,
Hung o'er the wilderness.
"Knowest thou the track?" quoth Thalaba,
"Or should we pause, and wait the wind
"To scatter this bewildering fog?"
The Sorcerer answered him
"Now let us hold right on,... for if we stray
"The Sun tomorrow will direct our course."
So saying, he towards the desert depths
Misleads the youth deceived.
Earlier the night came on,
Nor moon, nor stars, were visible in Heaven;
And when at morn the youth unclosed his eyes
He knew not where to turn his face in prayer.
"What shall we do?" Lobaba cried,
"The lights of Heaven have ceased
"To guide us on our way.
"Should we remain and wait
"More favourable skies?
"Soon would our food and water fail us here!
"And if we venture on,
"There are the dangers of the wilderness!"
"Sure it were best proceed!"
The chosen youth replies.
"So haply we may reach some tent, or grove
"Of dates, or stationed tribe.
"But idly to remain
"Were yielding effortless, and waiting death."
The wily Sorcerer willingly assents,
And farther in the sands,
Elate of heart, he leads the credulous youth.
Still o'er the wilderness
Settled the moveless mist.
The timid Antelope that heard their steps
Stood doubtful where to turn in that dim light,
The Ostrich, blindly hastening, met them full.
At night again in hope,
Young Thalaba laid down;
The morning came, and not one guiding ray
Thro' the thick mist was visible,
The same deep moveless mist that mantled all.
Oh for the Vulture's scream
That haunts for prey the abode of humankind!
Oh for the Plover's pleasant cry
To tell of water near!
Oh for the Camel-driver's song!
For now the water-skin grows light,
Tho' of the draught, more eagerly desired,
Imperious prudence took with sparing thirst.
Oft from the third night's broken sleep,
As in his dreams he heard
The sound of rushing winds,
Started the anxious youth, and looked abroad,
In vain! for still the deadly calm endured.
Another day past on,
The water-skin was drained,
But then one hope arrived
For there was motion in the air!
The sound of the wind arose anon
That scattered the thick mist,
And lo! at length the lovely face of Heaven!
Alas ... a wretched scene
Was opened on their view.
They looked around, no wells were near,
No tent, no human aid!
Flat on the Camel lay the water-skin,
Over hot sands and under the hot sun,
Dragged on with patient pain.
But oh the joy! the blessed sight!
When in the burning waste the Travellers
Saw a green meadow, fair with flowers besprent,
Azure and yellow, like the beautiful fields
Of England, when amid the growing grass
The blue-bell bends, the golden king-cup shines,
In the merry month of May!
Oh joy! the Travellers
Gaze on each other with hope-brightened eyes,
For sure thro' that green meadow flows
The living stream! and lo! their famished beast
Sees the restoring sight!
Hope gives his feeble limbs a sudden strength,
He hurries on!
The herbs so fair to eye
Were Senna, and the Gentian's blossom blue,
And kindred plants that with unwatered root
Fed in the burning sand, whose bitter leaves
Even frantic Famine loathed.
In uncommunicating misery
Silent they stood. At length Lobaba cried,
"Son we must slay the Camel, or we die
"For lack of water! thy young hand is firm,
"Draw forth the knife and pierce him!"
Wretch accurst,
Who that beheld thy venerable face,
Thy features fixed with suffering, the dry lips,
The feverish eyes, could deem that all within
Was magic ease, and fearlessness secure,
And wiles of hellish import? the young man
Paused with reluctant pity: but he saw
His comrade's red and painful countenance,
And his own burning breath came short and quick,
And at his feet the gasping beast
Lies, over-worn with want.
Then from his girdle Thalaba took the knife
With stern compassion, and from side to side
Across the Camel's throat,
Drew deep the crooked blade.
Servant of man, that merciful deed
For ever ends thy suffering, but what doom
Waits thy deliverer! "little will thy death
"Avail us!" thought the youth,
As in the water-skin he poured
The Camel's hoarded draught:
It gave a scant supply,
The poor allowance of one prudent day.
Son of Hodeirah, tho' thy steady soul
Despaired not, firm in faith,
Yet not the less did suffering Nature feel
Her pangs and trials, long their craving thirst
Struggled with fear, by fear itself inflamed;
But drop by drop, that poor,
That last supply is drained!
Still the same burning sun! no cloud in heaven!
The hot air quivers, and the sultry mist
Floats o'er the desert, with a show
Of distant waters, mocking their distress!
The youth's parched lips were black,
His tongue was dry and rough,
His eye-balls red with heat.
His comrade gazed on him with looks
That seemed to speak of pity, and he said
"Let me behold thy Ring,
"It may have virtue that can save us yet!"
With that he took his hand
And viewed the writing close,
Then cried with sudden joy
"It is a stone that whoso bears
"The Genii must obey!
"Now raise thy voice, my Son,
"And bid them in his name that here is written
"Preserve us in our need."
"Nay!" answered Thalaba,
"Shall I distrust the providence of God?
"Is it not He must save?
"If Allah wills it not
"Vain were the Genii's aid."
Whilst he spake Lobaba's eye
Full on the distance fixed,
Attended not his speech.
Its fearful meaning drew
The looks of Thalaba.
Columns of sand came moving on,
Red in the burning ray
Like obelisks of fire
They rushed before the driving wind.
Vain were all thoughts of flight!
They had not hoped escape
Could they have backed the Dromedary then
Who in his rapid race
Gives to the tranquil air, a drowning force.
High ... high in heaven upcurled
The dreadful columns moved,
Swift, as the whirlwind that impelled their way,
They rushed towards the Travellers!
The old Magician shrieked,
And lo! the foremost bursts,
Before the whirlwind's force,
Scattering afar a burning shower of sand.
"Now by the virtue of the Ring
"Save us!" Lobaba cried.
"While yet thou hast the power
"Save us. O save us! now!"
The youth made no reply,
Gazing in aweful wonder on the scene.
"Why dost thou wait?" the Old Man exclaimed,
"If Allah and the Prophet will not save
"Call on the Powers that will!"
"Ha! do I know thee, Infidel accurst?"
Exclaimed the awakened youth.
"And thou hast led me hither, Child of Sin!
"That fear might make me sell
"My soul to endless death!"
"Fool that thou art!" Lobaba cried,
"Call upon him whose name
"Thy charmed signet bears,
"Or die the death thy foolishness deserves!"
"Servant of Hell! die thou!" quoth Thalaba.
And leaning on his bow
He fitted the loose string,
And laid the arrow in its resting-place.
"Bow of my Father, do thy duty now!"
He drew the arrow to its point,
True to his eye it fled,
And full upon the breast
It smote the wizard man.
Astonished Thalaba beheld
The blunted point recoil.
A proud and bitter smile
Wrinkled Lobaba's cheek,
"Try once again thine earthly arms!" he cried.
"Rash Boy! the Power I serve
"Abandons not his votaries.
"It is for Allah's wretched slaves, like thou,
"To serve a master, who in the hour of need
"Forsakes them to their fate!
"I leave thee!"... and he shook his staff, and called
Swift as the viewless wind,
Self-moved, the Chariot came,
The Sorcerer mounts the seat.
"Yet once more weigh thy danger!" he exclaimed,
"Ascend the car with me,
"And with the speed of thought
"We pass the desert bounds."
The indignant youth vouchsafed not to reply,
And lo! the magic car begins its course!
Hark! hark!... he screams.... Lobaba screams!
What wretch, and hast thou raised
The rushing Terrors of the Wilderness
To fall on thine own head?
Death! death! inevitable death!
Driven by the breath of God
A column of the Desert met his way.
When Thalaba from adoration rose,
The air was cool, the sky
With welcome clouds o'ercast,
That soon came down in rain.
He lifted up his fevered face to heaven,
And bared his head and stretched his hands
To that delightful shower,
And felt the coolness flow thro' every limb
Freshening his powers of life.
A loud quick panting! Thalaba looks up,
He starts, and his instinctive hand
Grasps the knife hilt: for close beside
A Tyger passes him.
An indolent and languid eye
The passing Tyger turned;
His head was hanging down,
His dry tongue lolling low,
And the short panting of his fevered breath
Came thro' his hot parched nostrils painfully.
The young Arabian knew
The purport of his hurried pace,
And following him in hope
Saw joyful from afar
The Tyger stoop and drink.
The desert Pelican had built her nest
In that deep solitude.
And now returned from distant flight
Fraught with the river stream,
Her load of water had disburthened there.
Her young in the refreshing bath
Sported all wantonness;
Dipt down their callow heads,
Filled the swoln membrane from their plumeless throat
Pendant, and bills yet soft,
And buoyant with arched breast,
Plied in unpractised stroke
The oars of their broad feet.
They, as the spotted prowler of the wild
Laps the cool wave, around their mother croud,
And nestle underneath her outspread wings.
The spotted prowler of the wild
Lapt the cool wave, and satiate from the nest,
Guiltless of blood, withdrew.
The mother bird had moved not
But cowering o'er her nestlings,
Sate confident and fearless,
And watched the wonted guest.
But when the human visitant approached,
The alarmed Pelican
Retiring from that hostile shape,
Gathers her young, and menaces with wings,
And forward thrusts her threatening neck,
Its feathers ruffling in her wrath,
Bold with maternal fear.
Thalaba drank and in the water-skin
Hoarded the precious element.
Not all he took, but in the large nest left
Store that sufficed for life.
And journeying onward blest the Carrier Bird,
And blest in thankfulness,
Their common Father, provident for all.
With strength renewed and confident in faith
The son of Hodeirah proceeds;
Till after the long toil of many a day,
At length Bagdad appeared,
The City of his search.
He hastening to the gate
Roams o'er the city with insatiate eyes,
Its thousand dwellings o'er whose level roofs
Fair cupolas appeared, and high-domed mosques
And pointed minarets, and cypress groves
Every where scattered in unwithering green.
Thou too art fallen, Bagdad! City of Peace,
Thou too hast had thy day!
And loathsome Ignorance and brute Servitude
Pollute thy dwellings now,
Erst for the Mighty and the Wise renowned.
O yet illustrious for remembered fame,
Thy founder the Victorious, and the pomp
Of Haroun, for whose name by blood defiled,
Jahia's, and the blameless Barmecides',
Genius hath wrought salvation; and the years
When Science with the good Al-Maimon dwelt;
So one day may the Crescent from thy Mosques
Be plucked by Wisdom, when the enlightened arm
Of Europe conquers to redeem the East.
Then Pomp and Pleasure dwelt within her walls
Met in her arched Bazars;
All day the active poor
Showered a cool comfort o'er her thronging streets;
Labour was busy in her looms;
Thro' all her open gates
Long troops of laden Camels lined her roads,
And Tigris on his tameless current bore
Armenian harvests to her multitudes.
But not in sumptuous Caravansary
The adventurer idles there,
Nor satiates wonder with her pomp and wealth;
A long day's distance from the walls
Stands ruined Babylon!
The time of action is at hand,
The hope that for so many a year
Hath been his daily thought, his nightly dream,
Stings to more restlessness.
He loathes all lingering that delays the hour
When, full of glory, from his quest returned,
He on the pillar of the Tent beloved
Shall hang Hodeirah's sword.
The many-coloured domes
Yet wore one dusky hue,
The Cranes upon the Mosque
Kept their night-clatter still,
When thro' the gate the early Traveller past.
And when at evening o'er the swampy plain
The Bittern's Boom came far,
Distinct in darkness seen
Above the low horizon's lingering light
Rose the near ruins of old Babylon.
Once from her lofty walls the Charioteer
Looked down on swarming myriads; once she flung
Her arches o'er Euphrates conquered tide,
And thro' her brazen portals when she poured
Her armies forth, the distant nations looked
As men who watched the thunder-cloud in fear
Lest it should burst above them. She was fallen,
The Queen of Cities, Babylon was fallen!
Low lay her bulwarks; the black scorpion basked
In the palace courts, within her sanctuary
The She Wolf hid her whelps.
Is yonder huge and shapeless heap, what once
Had been the aerial Gardens, height on height
Rising like Medias mountains crowned with wood,
Work of imperial dotage? where the fame
Of Belus? where the Golden Image now,
Which at the sound of dulcimer and lute,
Cornet and sackbut, harp and psaltery,
The Assyrian slaves adored?
A labyrinth of ruins, Babylon
Spreads o'er the blasted plain:
The wandering Arab never sets his tent
Within her walls; the Shepherd eyes afar
Her evil Towers, and devious drives his flock.
Alone unchanged, a free and bridgeless tide
Euphrates rolls along,
Eternal Nature's work.
Thro' the broken portal,
Over weedy fragments,
Thalaba went his way.
Cautious he trod, and felt
The dangerous ground before him with his bow.
The Chacal started at his steps,
The Stork, alarmed at sound of man,
From her broad nest upon the old pillar top,
Affrighted fled on flapping wings.
The Adder in her haunts disturbed
Lanced at the intruding staff her arrowy tongue.
Twilight and moonshine dimly mingling gave
An aweful light obscure,
Evening not wholly closed,
The Moon still pale and faint.
An aweful light obscure,
Broken by many a mass of blackest shade;
Long column stretching dark thro' weeds and moss,
Broad length of lofty wall
Whose windows lay in light,
And of their former shape, low-arched or square,
Rude outline on the earth
Figured, with long grass fringed.
Reclined against a column's broken shaft,
Unknowing whitherward to bend his way
He stood and gazed around.
The Ruins closed him in,
It seemed as if no foot of man
For ages had intruded there.
Soon at approaching step
Starting, he turned and saw
A warrior in the moon beam drawing near.
Forward the Stranger came
And with a curious eye
Perused the Arab youth.
"And who art thou," he cried,
"That at an hour like this
"A way-bewildered traveller, seekest thou
"The ruinous shelter here?
"Or comest thou to hide
"The plunder of the night?
"Or hast thou spells to make
"These ruins, yawning from their rooted base
"Disclose their secret wealth?"
The youth replied, "nor wandering traveller
"Nor robber of the night
"Nor skilled in spells am I.
"I seek the Angels here,
"Haruth and Maruth. Stranger in thy turn,
"Why wanderest thou in Babylon,
"And who art thou, the Questioner?"
The man was fearless, and the tempered pride
That toned the voice of Thalaba
Displeased not him, himself of haughty heart.
Heedless he answered, "knowest thou
"Their cave of punishment?"
Vainly I seek it.
Art thou firm of foot
To tread the ways of danger?
Point the path!
Young Arab! if thou hast a heart can beat
Evenly in danger, if thy bowels yearn not
With human fears, at scenes where undisgraced
The soldier tried in battle might look back
And tremble, follow me!... for I am bound
Into that cave of horrors.
Gazed on his comrade, he was young, of port
Stately and strong; belike his face had pleased
A woman's eye, yet the youth read in it
Unrestrained passions, the obdurate soul
Bold in all evil daring; and it taught,
By Nature's irresistible instinct, doubt
Well timed and wary. Of himself assured,
Fearless of man, and confident in faith,
"Lead on!" cried Thalaba.
Mohareb led the way;
And thro' the ruined streets,
And thro' the farther gate
They past in silence on.
What sound is borne on the wind?
Is it the storm that shakes
The thousand oaks of the forest?
But Thalaba's long locks
Flow down his shoulders moveless, and the wind
In his loose mantle raises not one fold.
Is it the river's roar
Dashed down some rocky descent?
Along the level plain
Euphrates glides unheard.
What sound disturbs the night,
Loud as the summer forest in the storm,
As the river that roars among rocks?
And what the heavy cloud
That hangs upon the vale,
Thick as the mist o'er a well-watered plain
Settling at evening, when the cooler air
Lets its day-vapours fall;
Black as the sulphur-cloud
That thro' Vesuvius, or from Hecla's mouth
Rolls up, ascending from the infernal fires.
From Ait's bitumen lake
That heavy cloud ascends;
That everlasting roar
From where its gushing springs
Boil their black billows up.
Silent the Arab youth,
Along the verge of that wide lake,
Followed Mohareb's way
Towards a ridge of rocks that banked its side.
There from a cave with torrent force,
And everlasting roar,
The black bitumen rolled.
The moonlight lay upon the rocks.
Their crags were visible,
The shade of jutting cliffs,
And where broad lichens whitened some smooth spot,
And where the ivy hung
Its flowing tresses down.
A little way within the cave
The moonlight fell, glossing the sable tide
That gushed tumultuous out.
A little way it entered, then the rock
Arching its entrance, and the winding way,
Darkened the unseen depths.
No eye of mortal man
If unenabled by enchanted spell,
Had pierced those fearful depths.
For mingling with the roar
Of the portentous torrent, oft were heard
Shrieks, and wild yells that scared
The brooding Eagle from her midnight nest.
The affrighted countrymen
And ever when their way leads near
They hurry with averted eyes,
And dropping their beads fast
Pronounce the holy name.
There pausing at the cavern mouth
Mohareb turned to Thalaba,
"Now darest thou enter in?"
"Behold!" the youth replied,
And leading in his turn the dangerous way
Set foot within the cave.
"Stay Madman!" cried his comrade. "Wouldst thou rush
"Headlong to certain death?
"Where are thine arms to meet
"The Guardian of the Passage?" a loud shriek
That shook along the windings of the cave
Scattered the youth's reply.
Mohareb when the long reechoing ceased
Exclaimed, "Fate favoured thee,
"Young Arab! when she wrote upon thy brow
"The meeting of to-night;
"Else surely had thy name
"This hour been blotted from the Book of Life!"
So saying from beneath
His cloak a bag he drew;
"Young Arab! thou art brave," he cried,
"But thus to rush on danger unprepared,
"As lions spring upon the hunter's spear,
"Is blind, brute courage. Zohak keeps the cave,
"Giantly tyrant of primeval days.
"Force cannot win the passage." Thus he said
And from his wallet drew a human hand
Shrivelled, and dry, and black,
And fitting as he spake
A taper in its hold,
Pursued: "a murderer on the stake had died,
"I drove the Vulture from his limbs, and lopt
"The hand that did the murder, and drew up
"The tendon-strings to close its grasp,
"And in the sun and wind
"Parched it, nine weeks exposed.
"The Taper,... but not here the place to impart,
"Nor hast thou done the rites,
"That fit thee to partake the mystery.
"Look! it burns clear, but with the air around
"Its dead ingredients mingle deathiness.
"This when the Keeper of the Cave shall feel,
"Maugre the doom of Heaven,
"The salutary spell
"Shall lull his penal agony to sleep
"And leave the passage free."
Thalaba answered not.
Nor was there time for answer now,
For lo! Mohareb leads,
And o'er the vaulted cave
Trembles the accursed taper's feeble light.
There where the narrowing chasm
Rose loftier in the hill,
Stood Zohak, wretched man, condemned to keep
His Cave of punishment.
His was the frequent scream
Which far away the prowling Chacal heard
And howled in terror back:
For from his shoulders grew
Two snakes of monster size,
That ever at his head
Aimed eager their keen teeth
To satiate raving hunger with his brain.
He in the eternal conflict oft would seize
Their swelling necks, and in his giant grasp
Bruise them, and rend their flesh with bloody nails,
And howl for agony,
Feeling the pangs he gave, for of himself
Inseparable parts, his torturers grew.
To him approaching now
Mohareb held the withered arm
The Taper of enchanted power.
The unhallowed spell in hand unholy held
Now ministered to mercy, heavily
The wretche's eyelids closed,
And welcome and unfelt
Like the release of death
A sudden sleep fell on his vital powers.
Yet tho' along the cave
Lay Zohak's giant limbs,
The twin-born serpents kept the narrow pass,
Kindled their fiery eyes,
Darted their tongues of terror, and rolled out
Their undulating length,
Like the long streamers of some gallant ship
Buoyed on the wavy air,
Still struggling to flow on and still withheld.
The scent of living flesh
Inflamed their appetite.
Prepared for all the perils of the cave
Mohareb came. He from his wallet drew
Two human heads yet warm.
O hard of heart! whom not the visible power
Of retributive Justice, and the doom
Of Zohak in his sight,
Deterred from equal crime!
Two human heads, yet warm, he laid
Before the scaly guardians of the pass.
They to their wonted banquet of old years
Turned eager, and the narrow pass was free.
And now before their path
The opening cave dilates;
They reach a spacious vault
Where the black river fountains burst their way.
Now as a whirlwind's force
Had centered on the spring,
The gushing flood rolled up;
And now the deadened roar
Echoed beneath them, as its sudden pause
Left wide a dark abyss,
Adown whose fathomless gulphs the eye was lost.
Blue flames that hovered o'er the springs
Flung thro' the Cavern their uncertain light
Now waving on the waves they lay,
And now their fiery curls
Flowed in long tresses up,
And now contracting glowed with whiter heat.
Then up they poured again
Darting pale flashes thro' the tremulous air;
The flames, the red and yellow sulphur-smoke,
And the black darkness of the vault
Commingling indivisibly.
"Here," quoth Mohareb, "do the Angels dwell,
Then raised his voice and cried,
"Haruth and Maruth, hear me! not with rites
"Accursed, to disturb your penitence
"And learn forbidden lore,
"Repentant Angels, seek I your abode.
"Me Allah and the Prophet mission here,
"Their chosen servant I.
"And dost thou think"
"Mohareb cried, as with a scornful smile
He glanced upon his comrade, "dost thou think
"To trick them of their secret? for the dupes
"Of human-kind keep this lip-righteousness!
"'Twill serve thee in the Mosque
"And in the Market-place,
"But Spirits view the heart.
"Only by strong and torturing spells enforced,
"Those stubborn Angels teach the charm
"By which we must descend."
"Descend!" said Thalaba.
But then the wrinkling smile
Forsook Mohareb's cheek,
And darker feelings settled on his brow.
"Now by my soul," quoth he, "and I believe
"Some camel-kneed prayer-monger thro' the cave!
"What brings thee hither? thou shouldest have a hut
"By some Saint's grave beside the public way,
"There to less-knowing fools
"Retail thy Koran scraps,
"And in thy turn, die civet-like at last
"In the dung-perfume of thy sanctity!...
"Ye whom I seek! that, led by me,
"Feet uninitiate tread
"Your threshold, this atones!
"Fit sacrifice he falls!"
And forth he flashed his scymetar,
And raised the murderous blow.
Then ceased his power; his lifted arm,
Suspended by the spell,
Hung impotent to strike.
"Poor Hypocrite!" cried he,
"And this then is thy faith
"In Allah and the Prophet! they had failed
"To save thee, but for Magic's stolen aid;
"Yea, they had left thee yonder Serpent's meal,
"But that, in prudent cowardice,
"The chosen Servant of the Lord came in,
"Safe follower of my path!"
"Blasphemer! dost thou boast of guiding me?"
Kindling with pride quoth Thalaba,
"Blindly the wicked work
"The righteous will of Heaven.
"Sayest thou that diffident of God,
"In magic spell I trust?
"Liar! let witness this!"
And he drew off Abdaldar's Ring
And cast it in the gulph.
A skinny hand came up
And caught it as it fell,
And peals of devilish laughter shook the Cave.
Then joy suffused Mohareb's cheek,
And Thalaba beheld
The blue blade gleam, descending to destroy.
The undefended youth
Sprung forward, and he seized
Mohareb in his grasp,
And grappled with him breast to breast.
Sinewy and large of limb Mohareb was,
Broad-shouldered, and his joints
Knit firm, and in the strife
Of danger practised well.
Time had not thus matured young Thalaba:
But now the enthusiast mind,
The inspiration of his soul
Poured vigour like the strength
Of madness thro' his frame.
Mohareb reels before him! he right on
With knee, with breast, with arm,
Presses the staggering foe!
And now upon the brink
Of that tremendous spring,
There with fresh impulse and a rush of force
He thrust him from his hold.
The upwhirling flood received
Mohareb, then, absorbed,
Engulphed him in the abyss.
Thalaba's breath came fast,
And panting he breathed out
A broken prayer of thankfulness.
At length he spake and said,
"Haruth and Maruth! are ye here?
"Or has that evil guide misled my search?
"Invoke you. Hear me Angels! so may Heaven
"Accept and mitigate your penitence.
"I go to root from earth the Sorcerer brood,
"Tell me the needful Talisman!"
Thus as he spake, recumbent on the rock
Beyond the black abyss,
Their forms grew visible.
A settled sorrow sate upon their brows,
Sorrow alone, for trace of guilt and shame
No more remained; and gradual as by prayer
The sin was purged away,
Their robe of glory, purified of stain
Resumed the lustre of its native light.
In awe the youth received the answering voice,
"Son of Hodeirah! thou hast proved it here;
to doxan to poiete.]
_Lucian, Quomodo Hist. scribenda._
The sixth Book
The seventh Book
The eighth Book
The ninth Book
The tenth Book
The eleventh Book
The twelfth Book
So from the inmost cavern, Thalaba
Retrod the windings of the rock.
Still on the ground the giant limbs
Of Zohak were outstretched;
The spell of sleep had ceased
And his broad eyes were glaring on the youth:
Yet raised he not his arm to bar the way,
Fearful to rouse the snakes
Now lingering o'er their meal.
Oh then, emerging from that dreadful cave,
How grateful did the gale of night
Salute his freshened sense!
How full of lightsome joy,
Thankful to Heaven, he hastens by the verge
Of that bitumen lake,
Whose black and heavy fumes,
Surge heaving after surge,
Rolled like the billowy and tumultuous sea.
The song of many a bird at morn
Aroused him from his rest.
Lo! by his side a courser stood!
More animate of eye,
Of form more faultless never had he seen,
More light of limbs and beautiful in strength,
Among the race whose blood,
Pure and unmingled, from the royal steeds
Of Solomon came down.
The chosen Arab's eye
Glanced o'er his graceful shape,
His rich caparisons,
His crimson trappings gay.
But when he saw the mouth
Uncurbed, the unbridled neck,
Then flushed his cheek, and leapt his heart,
For sure he deemed that Heaven had sent
The Courser, whom no erring hand should guide.
And lo! the eager Steed
Throws his head and paws the ground,
Impatient of delay!
Then up leapt Thalaba
And away went the self-governed steed.
Far over the plain
Away went the bridleless steed;
With the dew of the morning his fetlocks were wet,
The foam frothed his limbs in the journey of noon,
Nor stayed he till over the westerly heaven
The shadows of evening had spread.
Then on a sheltered bank
The appointed Youth reposed,
And by him laid the docile courser down.
Again in the grey of the morning
Thalaba bounded up,
Over hill, over dale
Away goes the bridleless steed.
Again at eve he stops
Again the Youth descends.
His load discharged, his errand done,
Then bounded the courser away.
Heavy and dark the eve;
The Moon was hid on high,
A dim light only tinged the mist
That crost her in the path of Heaven.
All living sounds had ceased,
Only the flow of waters near was heard,
A low and lulling melody.
Fasting, yet not of want
Percipient, he on that mysterious steed
Had reached his resting place,
For expectation kept his nature up.
The flow of waters now
Awoke a feverish thirst:
Led by the sound, he moved
To seek the grateful wave.
A meteor in the hazy air
Played before his path;
Before him now it rolled
A globe of livid fire;
And now contracted to a steady light,
As when the solitary hermit prunes
His lamp's long undulating flame:
And now its wavy point
Up-blazing rose, like a young cypress-tree
Swayed by the heavy wind;
Anon to Thalaba it moved,
And wrapped him in its pale innocuous fire:
Now in the darkness drowned
Left him with eyes bedimmed,
And now emerging spread the scene to sight.
Led by the sound, and meteor-flame
Advanced the Arab youth.
Now to the nearest of the many rills
He stoops; ascending steam
Timely repels his hand,
For from its source it sprung, a boiling tide.
A second course with better hap he tries,
The wave intensly cold
Tempts to a copious draught.
There was a virtue in the wave,
His limbs that stiff with toil,
Dragged heavy, from the copious draught received
Lightness and supple strength.
O'erjoyed, and deeming the benignant Power
Who sent the reinless steed,
Had blessed the healing waters to his use
He laid him down to sleep;
Lulled by the soothing and incessant sound,
The flow of many waters, blending oft
With shriller tones and deep low murmurings
That from the fountain caves
In mingled melody
Like faery music, heard at midnight, came.
The sounds that last he heard at night
Awoke his sense at morn.
A scene of wonders lay before his eyes.
In mazy windings o'er the vale
Wandered a thousand streams;
They in their endless flow had channelled deep
The rocky soil o'er which they ran,
Veining its thousand islet stones,
Like clouds that freckle o'er the summer sky,
The blue etherial ocean circling each
And insulating all.
A thousand shapes they wore, those islet stones,
And Nature with her various tints
Varied anew their thousand forms:
For some were green with moss,
Some rich with yellow lichen's gold,
Or ruddier tinged, or grey, or silver-white,
Or sparkling sparry radiance to the sun.
Here gushed the fountains up,
Alternate light and blackness, like the play
Of sunbeams, on the warrior's burnished arms.
Yonder the river rolled, whose bed,
Their labyrinthine lingerings o'er
Received the confluent rills.
This was a wild and wonderous scene,
Strange and beautiful, as where
By Oton-tala, like a sea of stars,
The hundred sources of Hoangho burst.
High mountains closed the vale,
Bare rocky mountains, to all living things
Inhospitable, on whose sides no herb
Rooted, no insect fed, no bird awoke
Their echoes, save the Eagle, strong of wing,
A lonely plunderer, that afar
Sought in the vales his prey.
Thither towards those mountains, Thalaba
Advanced, for well he weened that there had Fate
Destined the adventures end.
Up a wide vale winding amid their depths,
A stony vale between receding heights
Of stone, he wound his way.
A cheerless place! the solitary Bee
Whose buzzing was the only sound of life
Flew there on restless wing,
Seeking in vain one blossom, where to fix.
Still Thalaba holds on,
The winding vale now narrows on his way,
And steeper of ascent
Rightward and leftward rise the rocks,
And now they meet across the vale.
Was it the toil of human hands
That hewed a passage in the rock,
Thro' whose rude portal-way
The light of heaven was seen?
Rude and low the portal-way,
Beyond the same ascending straits
Went winding up the wilds.
Still a bare, silent, solitary glen,
A fearful silence and a solitude
That made itself be felt.
And steeper now the ascent,
A rugged path, that tired
The straining muscles, toiling slowly up.
At length again a rock
Stretched o'er the narrow vale.
There also was a portal hewn,
But gates of massy iron barred the way,
Huge, solid, heavy-hinged.
There hung a horn beside the gate,
Ivory-tipt and brazen mouthed,
He took the ivory tip,
And thro' the brazen mouth he breathed;
From rock to rock rebounding rung the blast,
Like a long thunder peal!
The gates of iron, by no human arm
Unfolded, turning on their hinges slow,
Disclosed the passage of the rock.
He entered, and the iron gates
Fell to, and closed him in.
It was a narrow winding way,
Dim lamps suspended from the vault
Lent to the gloom an agitated light.
Winding it pierced the rock,
A long descending path
By gates of iron closed;
There also hung the horn beside
Of ivory tip and brazen mouth,
Again he took the ivory tip
And gave the brazen mouth his voice again.
Not now in thunder spake the horn,
But poured a sweet and thrilling melody:
The gates flew open, and a flood of light
Rushed on his dazzled eyes.
Was it to earthly Eden lost so long,
The youth had found the wonderous way?
But earthly Eden boasts
No terraced palaces,
No rich pavilions bright with woven gold.
Like these that in the vale
Rise amid odorous groves.
The astonished Thalaba
Doubting as tho' an unsubstantial dream
Beguiled his passive sense,
A moment closed his eyes;
Still they were there ... the palaces and groves,
And rich pavilions glittering golden light.
And lo! a man, reverend in comely age
Advancing meets the youth.
"Favoured of Fortune," he exclaimed,
"Go taste the joys of Paradise!
"The reinless steed that ranges o'er the world
"Brings hither those alone for lofty deeds
"Marked by their horoscope; permitted here
"A foretaste of the full beatitude,
"That in heroic acts they may go on
"More ardent, eager to return and reap
"Endless enjoyment here, their destined meed.
"Favoured of Fortune thou,
"Go taste the joys of Paradise!"
This said, he turned away, and left
The Youth in wonder mute;
For Thalaba stood mute
And passively received
The mingled joy that flowed on every sense.
Where'er his eye could reach
Fair structures, rain bow-hued, arose;
And rich pavilions thro' the opening woods
Gleamed from their waving curtains sunny gold;
And winding thro' the verdant vale
Flowed streams of liquid light;
And fluted cypresses reared up
Their living obelisks;
And broad-leaved Zennars in long colonades
O'er-arched delightful walks,
Where round their trunks the thousand-tendril'd vine
Wound up and hung the bows with greener wreaths,
And clusters not their own.
Wearied with endless beauty did his eyes
Return for rest? beside him teems the earth
With tulips, like the ruddy evening streaked,
And here the lily hangs her head of snow,
And here amid her sable cup
Shines the red eye-spot, like one brightest star
The solitary twinkler of the night,
And here the rose expands
Her paradise of leaves.
Then on his ear what sounds
Of harmony arose!
Far music and the distance-mellowed song
From bowers of merriment;
The waterfall remote;
The murmuring of the leafy groves;
The single nightingale
Perched in the Rosier by, so richly toned,
That never from that most melodious bird,
Singing a love-song to his brooding mate,
Did Thracian shepherd by the grave
Of Orpheus hear a sweeter song;
Tho' there the Spirit of the Sepulchre
All his own power infuse, to swell
The incense that he loves.
And oh! what odours the voluptuous vale
Scatters from jasmine bowers.
From yon rose wilderness,
From clustered henna, and from orange groves
That with such perfumes fill the breeze,
As Peris to their Sister bear,
When from the summit of some lofty tree
She hangs encaged, the captive of the Dives.
They from their pinions shake
The sweetness of celestial flowers,
And as her enemies impure
From that impervious poison far away
Fly groaning with the torment, she the while
Inhales her fragrant food.
Such odours flowed upon the world
When at Mohammed's nuptials, word
Went forth in Heaven to roll
The everlasting gates of Paradise
Back on their living hinges, that its gales
Might visit all below; the general bliss
Thrilled every bosom, and the family
Of man, for once partook one common joy.
Full of the joy, yet still awake
To wonder, on went Thalaba;
On every side the song of mirth,
The music of festivity,
Invite the passing youth.
Wearied at length with hunger and with heat
He enters in a banquet room,
Where round a fountain brink,
On silken carpets sate the festive train.
Instant thro' all his frame
Delightful coolness spread;
The playing fount refreshed
The agitated air;
The very light came cooled thro' silvering panes
Of pearly shell, like the pale moon-beam tinged;
Or where the wine-vase filled the aperture,
Rosy as rising morn, or softer gleam
Of saffron, like the sunny evening mist:
Thro' every hue, and streaked by all
The flowing fountain played.
Around the water-edge
Vessels of wine, alternate placed,
Ruby and amber, tinged its little waves.
From golden goblets there
The guests sate quaffing the delicious juice
Of Shiraz' golden grape.
But Thalaba took not the draught
For rightly he knew had the Prophet forbidden
That beverage the mother of sins.
Nor did the urgent guests
Proffer a second time the liquid fire
For in the youth's strong eye they saw
No moveable resolve.
Yet not uncourteous, Thalaba
Drank the cool draught of innocence,
That fragrant from its dewy vase
Came purer than it left its native bed.
And he partook the odorous fruits,
For all rich fruits were there.
Water-melons rough of rind,
Whose pulp the thirsty lip
Dissolved into a draught:
Pistachios from the heavy-clustered trees
Of Malavert, or Haleb's fertile soil,
And Casbin's luscious grapes of amber hue,
That many a week endure
The summer sun intense,
Till by its powerful fire
All watery particles exhaled, alone
The strong essential sweetness ripens there.
Here cased in ice, the apricot,
A topaz, crystal-set:
Here on a plate of snow
The sunny orange rests,
And still the aloes and the sandal-wood
From golden censers o'er the banquet room
Diffuse their dying sweets.
Anon a troop of females formed the dance
Their ancles bound with bracelet-bells
That made the modulating harmony.
Transparent garments to the greedy eye
Gave all their harlot limbs,
That writhed, in each immodest gesture skilled.
With earnest eyes the banqueters
Fed on the sight impure;
And Thalaba, he gazed,
But in his heart he bore a talisman
Whose blessed Alchemy
To virtuous thoughts refined
The loose suggestions of the scene impure.
Oneiza's image swam before his sight,
He rose, and from the banquet room he rushed,
And tears ran down his burning cheek,
And nature for a moment woke the thought
And murmured, that from all domestic joys
Estranged, he wandered o'er the world
A lonely being, far from all he loved.
Son of Hodeirah, not among thy crimes
That murmur shall be written!
From tents of revelry,
From festal bowers, to solitude he ran,
And now he reached where all the rills
Of that well-watered garden in one tide
Rolled their collected waves.
A straight and stately bridge
Stretched its long arches o'er the ample stream.
Strong in the evening and distinct its shade
Lay on the watry mirror, and his eye
Saw it united with its parent pile
One huge fantastic fabric. Drawing near,
Loud from the chambers of the bridge below,
Sounds of carousal came and song,
And unveiled women bade the advancing youth
Come merry-make with them.
Unhearing or unheeding, Thalaba
Past o'er with hurried pace,
And plunged amid the forest solitude.
His soul returned to you.
He cast himself upon the earth
And closed his eyes, and called
The voluntary vision up.
A cry as of distress
Aroused him; loud it came, and near!
He started up, he strung his bow,
He plucked the arrow forth.
Again a shriek ... a woman's shriek!
And lo! she rushes thro' the trees,
Her veil all rent, her garments torn!
He follows close, the ravisher....
Even on the unechoing grass
She hears his tread, so close!
"Prophet save me! save me God!
"Help! help!" she cried to Thalaba,
Thalaba drew the bow.
The unerring arrow did its work of death.
He turned him to the woman, and beheld
From fear, amazement, joy,
At length the Arabian Maid recovering speech,
Threw around Thalaba her arms and cried,
"My father! O my father!" Thalaba
In wonder lost, yet fearful to enquire,
Bent down his cheek on hers,
And their tears mingled as they fell.
At night they seized me, Thalaba! in my sleep,...
Thou wert not near,... and yet when in their grasp
I woke, my shriek of terror called on thee.
My father could not save me,... an old man!
And they were strong and many,... O my God,
The hearts they must have had to hear his prayers,
And yet to leave him childless!
We will seek him.
We will return to Araby.
We should not find him, Thalaba! our tent
Is desolate, the wind hath heaped the sands
Within its door, the lizard's track is left
Fresh on the untrodden dust; prowling by night
The tyger, as he passes hears no breath
Of man, and turns to search its solitude.
Alas! he strays a wretched wanderer
Seeking his child! old man, he will not rest,...
He cannot rest, his sleep is misery,
His dreams are of my wretchedness, my wrongs....
O Thalaba! this is a wicked place!
Let us be gone!
But how to pass again
The iron doors that opening at a breath
Gave easy entrance? armies in their strength,
Would fail to move those hinges for return!
But we can climb the mountains that shut in
This dreadful garden.
Are Oneiza's limbs
Equal to that long toil?
Oh I am strong
Dear Thalaba! for this ... fear gives me force,
And you are with me!
So she took his hand,
And gently drew him forward, and they went
Towards the mountain chain.
It was broad moonlight, and obscure or lost
The garden beauties lay,
But the great boundary rose, distinctly marked.
These were no little hills,
No sloping uplands lifting to the sun
Their vine-yards, with fresh verdure, and the shade
Of ancient woods, courting the loiterer
To win the easy ascent: stone mountains these
Desolate rock on rock,
The burthens of the earth,
Whose snowy summits met the morning beam
When night was in the vale, whose feet were fixed
In the world's foundations. Thalaba surveyed
The heights precipitous,
Impending crags, rocks unascendible,
And summits that had tired the eagle's wing;
"There is no way!" he cried.
Paler Oneiza grew
And hung upon his arm a feebler weight.
But soon again to hope
Revives the Arabian maid,
As Thalaba imparts the sudden thought.
"I past a river," cried the youth
"A full and copious stream.
"The flowing waters cannot be restrained
"And where they find or force their way,
"There we perchance may follow, thitherward
"The current rolled along."
So saying yet again in hope
Quickening their eager steps
They turned them thitherward.
Silent and calm the river rolled along,
And at the verge arrived
Of that fair garden, o'er a rocky bed
Towards the mountain base,
Still full and silent, held its even way,
But the deep sound, the dash
Louder and louder in the distance rose,
As if it forced its stream
Struggling with crags along a narrow pass.
And lo! where raving o'er a hollow course
The ever-flowing tide
Foams in a thousand whirlpools! there adown
The perforated rock
Plunge the whole waters, so precipitous,
So fathomless a fall
That their earth-shaking roar came deadened up
Like subterranean thunders.
"Allah save us!"
Oneiza cried, "there is no path for man
"From this accursed place!"
And as she spake her joints
Were loosened, and her knees sunk under her.
"Cheer up, Oneiza!" Thalaba replied,
"Be of good heart. We cannot fly
"The dangers of the place,
"But we can conquer them!"
And the young Arab's soul
Arose within him; "what is he," he cried,
"Who has prepared this garden of delight,
"And wherefore are its snares?"
The Arabian Maid replied,
"The Women when I entered, welcomed me
"To Paradise, by Aloadin's will
"Chosen like themselves, a Houri of the Earth.
"They told me, credulous of his blasphemies,
"That Aloadin placed them to reward
"His faithful servants with the joys of Heaven.
"O Thalaba, and all are ready here
"To wreak his wicked will, and work all crimes!
"How then shall we escape?"
"Woe to him!" cried the Appointed, a stern smile
Darkening with stronger shades his countenance,
"Woe to him! he hath laid his toils
"To take the Antelope,
"The Lion is come in!"
She shook her head, "a Sorcerer he
"And guarded by so many! Thalaba,...
"And thou but one!"
He raised his hand to Heaven,
"Is there not God, Oneiza?
"I have a Talisman, that, whoso bears,
"Of Evil can cast down.
"Hath marked me from mankind!
"Now rest in faith, and I will guard thy sleep!"
So on a violet bank
The Arabian Maid lay down,
Her soft cheek pillowed upon moss and flowers.
She lay in silent prayer,
Till prayer had tranquillized her fears,
And sleep fell on her. By her side
Silent sate Thalaba,
And gazed upon the Maid,
And as he gazed, drew in
New courage and intenser faith,
And waited calmly for the eventful day.
Loud sung the Lark, the awakened Maid
Beheld him twinkling in the morning light,
And wished for wings and liberty like his.
The flush of fear inflamed her cheek,
But Thalaba was calm of soul,
Collected for the work.
He pondered in his mind
How from Lobaba's breast
His blunted arrow fell.
Aloadin too might wear
Spell perchance of equal power
To blunt the weapon's edge!
Beside the river-brink,
Rose a young poplar, whose unsteady leaves
Varying their verdure to the gale,
With silver glitter caught
His meditating eye.
Then to Oneiza turned the youth
And gave his father's bow,
And o'er her shoulders slung
The quiver arrow-stored.
"Me other weapon suits;" said he,
"Bear thou the Bow: dear Maid!
"The days return upon me, when these shafts,
"True to thy guidance, from the lofty palm
"Brought down the cluster, and thy gladdened eye
"Exulting turned to seek the voice of praise.
"Oh! yet again Oneiza, we shall share
"Our desert joys!"
So saying to the bank
He moved, and stooping low,
With double grasp, hand below hand, he clenched
And from its watry soil
Uptore the poplar trunk.
Then off he shook the clotted earth,
And broke away the head
And boughs and lesser roots,
And lifting it aloft
Wielded with able sway the massy club.
"Now for this child of Hell!" quoth Thalaba,
"Belike he shall exchange to day
"His dainty Paradise
"For other dwelling, and the fruit
"Of Zaccoum, cursed tree."
With that the youth and Arab maid
Towards the garden centre past.
It chanced that Aloadin had convoked
The garden-habitants,
And with the assembled throng
Oneiza mingled, and the appointed youth.
Unmarked they mingled, or if one
With busier finger to his neighbour notes
The quivered Maid, "haply," he says,
"Some daughter of the Homerites,
"Or one who yet remembers with delight
"Her native tents of Himiar!" "Nay!" rejoins
His comrade, "a love-pageant! for the man
"Mimics with that fierce eye and knotty club
"Some savage lion-tamer, she forsooth
"Must play the heroine of the years of old!"
Radiant with gems upon his throne of gold
Aloadin sate.
O'er the Sorcerer's head
Hovered a Bird, and in the fragrant air
Waved his winnowing wings,
A living canopy.
Large as the plumeless Cassowar
Was that o'ershadowing Bird;
So huge his talons, in their grasp
The Eagle would have hung a helpless prey.
His beak was iron, and his plumes
Glittered like burnished gold,
And his eyes glowed, as tho' an inward fire
Shone thro' a diamond orb.
The blinded multitude
And bent the knee before him,
And shouted out his praise,
"Mighty art thou, the Bestower of joy,
Aloadin waved his hand,
In idolizing reverence
Moveless they stood and mute.
"Children of Earth," he cried,
"Whom I have guided here
"By easier passage than the gate of Death,
"The infidel Sultan to whose lands
"My mountains reach their roots,
"Blasphemes and threatens me.
"Strong are his armies, many are his guards,
"Yet may a dagger find him.
"Children of Earth, I tempt you not
"With the vain promise of a bliss unseen,
"With tales of a hereafter Heaven
"Whence never Traveller hath returned!
"Have ye not tasted of the cup of joy,
"That in these groves of happiness
"For ever over-mantling tempts
"The ever-thirsty lip?
"Who is there here that by a deed
"Of danger will deserve
"The eternal joys of actual Paradise?
"I!" Thalaba exclaimed,
And springing forward, on the Sorcerer's head
He dashed the knotty club.
He fell not, tho' the force
Shattered his skull; nor flowed the blood.
For by some hellish talisman
His life imprisoned still
Dwelt in the body. The astonished crowd
Stand motionless with fear, and wait
Immediate vengeance from the wrath of Heaven.
And lo! the Bird ... the monster Bird
Soars up ... then pounces down
To seize on Thalaba!
Now Oneiza, bend the bow,
Now draw the arrow home!
It fled, the arrow from Oneiza's hand,
It pierced the monster Bird,
It broke the Talisman.
Then darkness covered all,...
Earth shook, Heaven thundered, and amid the yells
Of Spirits accursed, destroyed
At last the earth was still;
The yelling of the Demons ceased;
Opening the wreck and ruin to their sight
The darkness rolled away. Alone in life
Amid the desolation and the dead
They looked around, the rocks were rent,
The path was open, late by magic closed.
Awe-struck and silent down the stony glen
They wound their thoughtful way.
Amid the vale below
Tents rose, and streamers played
And javelins sparkled in the sun,
And multitudes encamped
Swarmed, far as eye could follow, o'er the plain.
There in his war pavilion sate
In council with his Chiefs
Before his presence there a Captain led
Oneiza and the appointed Youth.
"Obedient to our Lord's command," said he,
"We past towards the mountains, and began
"The ascending strait; when suddenly Earth shook,
"And darkness like the midnight fell around,
"And fire and thunder came from Heaven
"As tho' the Retribution day were come.
"After the terror ceased, and when with hearts
"Somewhat assured, again we ventured on,
"This youth and woman met us on the way.
"They told us that from Aloadin's haunt
"They came on whom the judgement-stroke has fallen;
"He and his sinful Paradise at once
"Destroyed by them, the agents they of Heaven.
"Therefore I brought them hither, to repeat
"The tale before thy presence; that as search
"Shall prove it false or faithful, to their merit
"Thou mayest reward them."
"Be it done to us,"
Thalaba answered, "as the truth shall prove!"
The Sultan while he spake
"Fixed on him the proud eye of sovereignty;
"If thou hast played with us,
"By Allah and by Ali, Death shall seal
"The lying lips for ever! if the thing
"Be as thou sayest it, Arab, thou shalt stand
And hark! the cry
The lengthening cry, the increasing shout
Of joyful multitudes!
Breathless and panting to the tent
The bearer of good tidings comes,
"O Sultan, live for ever! be thy foes
"Like Aloadin all!
"The wrath of God hath smitten him."
Joy at the welcome tale
Shone in the Sultan's cheek
"Array the Arab in the robe
"Of honour," he exclaimed,
"And place a chain of gold around his neck,
"And bind around his brow the diadem,
"And mount him on my steed of state,
"And lead him thro' the camp,
"And let the Heralds go before and cry
"Thus shall the Sultan reward
"The man who serves him well!"
Then in the purple robe
They vested Thalaba.
And hung around his neck the golden chain,
And bound his forehead with the diadem,
And on the royal steed
They led him thro' the camp,
And Heralds went before and cried
"Thus shall the Sultan reward
"The man who serves him well!"
When from the pomp of triumph
And presence of the King
Thalaba sought the tent allotted him,
Thoughtful the Arabian Maid beheld
His animated eye,
His cheek inflamed with pride.
"Oneiza!" cried the youth,
"The King hath done according to his word,
"And made me in the land
"Next to himself be named!...
"But why that serious melancholy smile?
"Oneiza when I heard the voice that gave me
"Honour, and wealth, and fame, the instant thought
"Arose to fill my joy, that thou wouldest hear
"The tidings, and be happy."
Thou wouldest not have me mirthful! am I not
An orphan,... among strangers?
But with me.
Nay be comforted! last night
To what wert thou exposed! in what a peril
The morning found us! safety, honour, wealth
These now are ours. This instant who thou wert
The Sultan asked. I told him from our childhood
We had been plighted;... was I wrong Oneiza?
And when he said with bounties he would heap
Our nuptials,... wilt thou blame me if I blest
His will, that bade me fix the marriage day!
In tears Oneiza?...
Hath marked thee from mankind!
Perhaps when Aloadin was destroyed
The mission ceased, else would wise Providence
With its rewards and blessings strew my path
Thus for accomplished service?
Or if haply not, yet whither should I go?
Is it not prudent to abide in peace
Till I am summoned?
But Moath is not there; and wouldest thou dwell
In a Stranger's tent? thy father then might seek
In long and fruitless wandering for his child.
Take me then to Mecca!
There let me dwell a servant of the Temple.
Bind thou thyself my veil,... to human eye
It never shall be lifted. There, whilst thou
Shalt go upon thine enterprize, my prayers,
Dear Thalaba! shall rise to succour thee,
And I shall live,... if not in happiness;
Surely in hope.
Oh think of better things!
The will of Heaven is plain: by wonderous ways
It led us here, and soon the common voice
Shall tell what we have done, and how we dwell
Under the shadow of the Sultan's wing,
So shall thy father hear the fame, and find us
What he hath wished us ever.... Still in tears!
Still that unwilling eye! nay ... nay.... Oneiza....
Has then another since I left the tent....
With song, with music, and with dance
The bridal pomp proceeds.
Following on the veiled Bride
Fifty female slaves attend
In costly robes that gleam
With interwoven gold,
And sparkle far with gems.
An hundred slaves behind them bear
Vessels of silver and vessels of gold
And many a gorgeous garment gay
The presents that the Sultan gave.
On either hand the pages go
With torches flaring thro' the gloom,
And trump and timbrel merriment
Accompanies their way;
And multitudes with loud acclaim
Shout blessings on the Bride.
And now they reach the palace pile,
The palace home of Thalaba,
And now the marriage feast is spread
And from the finished banquet now
The wedding guests are gone.
Who comes from the bridal chamber?
Go not among the Tombs, Old Man!
There is a madman there.
Will he harm me if I go?
Not he, poor miserable man!
But 'tis a wretched sight to see
His utter wretchedness.
For all day long he lies on a grave,
And never is he seen to weep,
And never is he heard to groan.
Nor ever at the hour of prayer
Bends his knee, nor moves his lips.
I have taken him food for charity
And never a word he spake,
But yet so ghastly he looked
That I have awakened at night
With the dream of his ghastly eyes.
Now go not among the Tombs, Old Man!
Wherefore has the wrath of God
So sorely stricken him?
He came a Stranger to the land,
And did good service to the Sultan,
And well his service was rewarded.
The Sultan named him next himself,
And gave a palace for his dwelling,
And dowered his bride with rich domains.
But on his wedding night
There came the Angel of Death.
Since that hour a man distracted
Among the sepulchres he wanders.
The Sultan when he heard the tale
Said that for some untold crime
Judgement thus had stricken him,
And asking Heaven forgiveness
That he had shewn him favour,
Abandoned him to want.
A Stranger did you say?
An Arab born, like you.
But go not among the Tombs,
For the sight of his wretchedness
Might make a hard heart ache!
Nay, nay, I never yet have shunned
A countryman in distress:
And the sound of his dear native tongue
May be like the voice of a friend.
The Woman pointed out,
Old Moath bent his way.
By the tomb lay Thalaba,
In the light of the setting eve.
The sun, and the wind, and the rain
Had rusted his raven locks,
His checks were fallen in,
His face bones prominent,
By the tomb he lay along
And his lean fingers played,
Unwitting, with the grass that grew beside.
The Old man knew him not,
And drawing near him cried
"Countryman, peace be with thee!"
The sound of his dear native tongue
He raised his countenance
And saw the good Old Man,
And he arose, and fell upon his neck,
And groaned in bitterness.
Then Moath knew the youth,
And feared that he was childless, and he turned
His eyes, and pointed to the tomb.
"Old Man!" cried Thalaba,
"Thy search is ended there!"
The father's cheek grew white
And his lip quivered with the misery;
Howbeit, collecting with a painful voice
He answered, "God is good! his will be done!"
The woe in which he spake,
The resignation that inspired his speech,
They softened Thalaba.
"Thou hast a solace in thy grief," he cried,
"A comforter within!
"Moath! thou seest me here,
"A God-abandoned wretch."
The Old Man looked at him incredulous.
"Nightly," the youth pursued,
"Thy daughter comes to drive me to despair.
"Moath thou thinkest me mad,...
"But when the Cryer from the Minaret
"Proclaims the midnight hour,
"Hast thou a heart to see her?"
The clang of clarions and of drums
Accompanied the Sun's descent.
"Dost thou not pray? my son!"
The white flag waving on the neighbouring Mosque;
Then Thalaba's eye grew wild,
"Pray!" echoed he, "I must not pray!"
And the hollow groan he gave
Went to the Old Man's heart,
And bowing down his face to earth,
In fervent agony he called on God.
A night of darkness and of storms!
To roof him from the rain.
A night of storms! the wind
Swept thro' the moonless sky
And moaned among the pillared sepulchres.
And in the pauses of its sweep
They heard the heavy rain
Beat on the monument above.
In silence on Oneiza's grave
The Father and the Husband sate.
The Cryer from the Minaret
Proclaimed the midnight hour;
"Now! now!" cried Thalaba,
And o'er the chamber of the tomb
There spread a lurid gleam
Like the reflection of a sulphur fire,
And in that hideous light
Oneiza stood before them, it was She,
Her very lineaments, and such as death
Had changed them, livid cheeks, and lips of blue.
But in her eyes there dwelt
Brightness more terrible
Than all the loathsomeness of death.
"Still art thou living, wretch?"
In hollow tones she cried to Thalaba,
"And must I nightly leave my grave
"To tell thee, still in vain,
"God has abandoned thee?"
"This is not she!" the Old Man exclaimed,
"A Fiend! a manifest Fiend!"
And to the youth he held his lance,
"Strike and deliver thyself!"
"Strike HER!" cried Thalaba,
And palsied of all powers
Gazed fixedly upon the dreadful form.
"Yea! strike her!" cried a voice whose tones
Flowed with such sudden healing thro' his soul,
As when the desert shower
From death delivered him.
But unobedient to that well-known voice
His eye was seeking it,
When Moath firm of heart,
Performed the bidding; thro' the vampire corpse
He thrust his lance; it fell,
And howling with the wound
Its demon tenant fled.
A sapphire light fell on them,
And garmented with glory, in their sight
Oneiza's Spirit stood.
"O Thalaba!" she cried,
"Abandon not thyself!
"Wouldst thou for ever lose me?... go, fulfill
"Thy quest, that in the Bowers of Paradise
"In vain I may not wait thee, O my Husband!"
To Moath then the Spirit
Turned the dark lustre of her Angel eyes,
"Short is thy destined path,
"O my dear father! to the abode of bliss.
"There with the thought of death.
"Comfort thy lonely age,
"And Azrael the Deliverer, soon
"Shall visit thee in peace."
They stood with earnest eyes
And arms out-reaching, when again
The darkness closed around them.
The soul of Thalaba revived;
He from the floor the quiver took
And as he bent the bow, exclaimed,
"Was it the over-ruling Providence
"That in the hour of frenzy led my hands
"Instinctively to this?
"To-morrow, and the sun shall brace anew
"The slackened cord that now sounds loose and damp,
"To-morrow, and its livelier tone will sing
"In tort vibration to the arrow's flight.
"I ... but I also, with recovered health
"Of heart, shall do my duty.
"My Father! here I leave thee then!" he cried,
"And not to meet again
"Till at the gate of Paradise
"The eternal union of our joys commence.
"We parted last in darkness!"... and the youth
Thought with what other hopes,
But now his heart was calm,
For on his soul a heavenly hope had dawned.
The Old Man answered nothing, but he held
His garment and to the door
Of the Tomb Chamber followed him.
The rain had ceased, the sky was wild
Its black clouds broken by the storm.
And lo! it chanced that in the chasm
Of Heaven between, a star,
Leaving along its path continuous light,
Shot eastward. "See my guide!" quoth Thalaba,
And turning, he received
Old Moath's last embrace,
And his last blessing.
It was eve,
When an old Dervise, sitting in the sun
At his cell door, invited for the night
The traveller; in the sun
He spread the plain repast
Rice and fresh grapes, and at their feet there flowed
The brook of which they drank.
So as they sate at meal,
With song, with music, and with dance,
A wedding train went by;
The veiled bride, the female slaves,
The torches of festivity,
And trump and timbrel merriment
Accompanied their way.
The good old Dervise gave
A blessing as they past.
But Thalaba looked on,
And breathed a low, deep groan, and hid his face.
The Dervise had known sorrow; and he felt
Compassion; and his words
Of pity and of piety
Opened the young man's heart
And he told all his tale.
"Repine not, O my Son!" the Old Man replied,
"That Heaven has chastened thee.
"Behold this vine, I found it a wild tree
"Whose wanton strength had swoln into
"Irregular twigs, and bold excrescencies,
"And spent itself in leaves and little rings,
"In the vain flourish of its outwardness
"Wasting the sap and strength
"That should have given forth fruit.
"But when I pruned the Tree,
"Then it grew temperate in its vain expence
"Of useless leaves, and knotted, as thou seest,
"Into these full, clear, clusters, to repay
"The hand whose foresight wounded it.
"Repine not, O my Son!
"In wisdom and in mercy Heaven inflicts,
"Like a wise Leech, its painful remedies."
Then pausing, "whither goest thou now?" he asked.
"I know not," answered Thalaba,
"Straight on, with Destiny my guide."
Quoth the Old Man, "I will not blame thy trust,
"And yet methinks thy feet
"Should tread with certainty.
"In Kaf the Simorg hath his dwelling place,
"The all-knowing Bird of Ages, who hath seen
"The World, with all her children, thrice destroyed.
"Long is the thither path,
"And difficult the way, of danger full;
"But his unerring voice
"Could point to certain end thy weary search."
Easy assent the youth
Gave to the words of wisdom; and behold
At dawn, the adventurer on his way to Kaf.
And he has travelled many a day
And many a river swum over,
And many a mountain ridge has crost
And many a measureless plain,
And now amid the wilds advanced,
Long is it since his eyes
Have seen the trace of man.
Cold! cold! 'tis a chilly clime
That the toil of the youth has reached,
And he is aweary now,
And faint for the lack of food.
Cold! cold! there is no Sun in heaven
But a heavy and uniform cloud
And the snows begin to fall.
Dost thou wish for thy deserts, O Son of Hodeirah?
Dost thou long for the gales of Arabia?
Cold! cold! his blood flows languid,
His hands are red, his lips are blue,
His feet are sore with the frost.
Cheer thee! cheer thee! Thalaba!
A little yet bear up!
All waste! no sign of life
But the track of the wolf and the bear!
No sound but the wild, wild wind
And the snow crunching under his feet!
Night is come; no moon, no stars,
Only the light of the snow!
But behold a fire in the cave of the hill
A heart-reviving fire;
And thither with strength renewed
Thalaba presses on.
He found a Woman in the cave,
A solitary Woman,
Who by the fire was spinning
And singing as she spun.
The pine boughs they blazed chearfully
And her face was bright with the flame.
Her face was as a Damsel's face
And yet her hair was grey.
She bade him welcome with a smile
And still continued spinning
And singing as she spun.
The thread the Woman drew
Was finer than the silkworm's,
Was finer than the gossamer.
The song she sung was low and sweet
And Thalaba knew not the words.
He laid his bow before the hearth,
For the string was frozen stiff.
He took the quiver from his neck,
For the arrow plumes were iced.
Then as the chearful fire
Revived his languid limbs,
The adventurer asked for food.
The Woman answered him,
And still her speech was song,
"The She Bear she dwells near to me,
"And she hath cubs, one, two and three.
"She hunts the deer and brings him here,
"And then with her I make good cheer,
"And she to the chase is gone
"And she will be here anon."
She ceased from her work as she spake,
And when she had answered him,
Again her fingers twirled the thread
And again the Woman began
In low, sweet, tones to sing
The unintelligible song.
The thread she spun it gleamed like gold
In the light of the odorous fire,
And yet so wonderous thin,
That save when the light shone on it
It could not be seen by the eye.
The youth sate watching it,
And she beheld his wonder.
And then again she spake to him
And still her speech was song,
"Now twine it round thy hands I say,
"Now twine it round thy hands I pray,
"My thread is small, my thread is fine,
"But he must be
"A stronger than thee,
"Who can break this thread of mine!"
And up she raised her bright blue eyes
And sweetly she smiled on him,
And he conceived no ill.
And round and round his right hand,
And round and round his left,
He wound the thread so fine.
And then again the Woman spake,
And still her speech was song,
"Now thy strength, O Stranger, strain,
"Now then break the slender chain."
Thalaba strove, but the thread
Was woven by magic hands,
And in his cheek the flush of shame
Arose, commixt with fear.
She beheld and laughed at him,
And then again she sung,
"My thread is small, my thread is fine,
"But he must be
"A stronger than thee
"Who can break this thread of mine."
And up she raised her bright blue eyes
And fiercely she smiled on him,
"I thank thee, I thank thee, Hodeirah's Son!
"I thank thee for doing what can't be undone,
"For binding thyself in the chain I have spun!"
Then from his head she wrenched
A lock of his raven hair,
And cast it in the fire
And cried aloud as it burnt,
"Sister! Sister! hear my voice!
"Sister! Sister! come and rejoice,
"The web is spun,
"The prize is won,
"The work is done,
"For I have made captive Hoderiah's Son."
Borne in her magic car
The Sister Sorceress came,
Khawla, the fiercest of the Sorcerer brood.
She gazed upon the youth,
She bade him break the slender thread,
She laughed aloud for scorn,
She clapt her hands for joy.
The She Bear from the chase came in,
She bore the prey in her bloody mouth,
She laid it at Maimuna's feet,
And she looked up with wistful eyes
As if to ask her share.
"There! there!" quoth Maimuna
And pointing to the prisoner youth
She spurned him with her foot,
And bade her make her meal.
But soon their mockery failed them
And anger and shame arose,
For the She Bear fawned on Thalaba
And quietly licked his hand.
The grey haired Sorceress stamped the ground
And called a Spirit up,
"Shall we bear the Enemy
"To the dungeon dens below?"
Woe! woe! to our Empire woe!
If ever he tread the caverns below.
Shall we leave him fettered here
With hunger and cold to die?
Away from thy lonely dwelling fly!
Here I see a danger nigh
That he should live and thou shouldst die.
Whither must we bear the foe?
To Mohareb's island go,
There shalt thou secure the foe,
There prevent thy future woe.
Then in the Car they threw
The fettered Thalaba,
And took their seats, and set
Their feet upon his neck,
Maimuna held the reins
And Khawla shook the scourge
And away! away! away!
They were no steeds of mortal race
That drew the magic car
With the swiftness of feet and of wings.
The snow-dust rises behind them,
The ice-rocks splinters fly,
And hark! in the valley below
The sound of their chariot wheels
And they are far over the mountains.
Away! away! away!
Shout their joy as the Sisters pass,
The Ghosts of the Wicked that wander by night
Flit over the magic car.
Away! away! away!
Over the hills and the plains
Over the rivers and rocks,
Over the sands of the shore;
The waves of ocean heave
Under the magic steeds,
With unwet hoofs they trample the deep
And now they reach the Island coast,
And away to the city the Monarch's abode.
Open fly the city gates,
Open fly the iron doors
The doors of the palace court.
Then stopt the charmed car.
The Monarch heard the chariot wheels
And forth he came to greet
The Mistress whom he served.
He knew the captive youth,
And Thalaba beheld
Mohareb in the robes of royalty,
Whom erst his arm had thrust
Down the bitumen pit.
"Go up, and read the stars!"
Lo! on the terrace of the topmost tower
She stands; her darkening eyes,
Her fine face raised to heaven,
Her white hair flowing like the silver streams
That streak the northern night.
They hear her coming tread,
They lift their asking eyes,
Her face is serious, her unwilling lips
Slow to the tale of ill.
"What hast thou read? what hast thou read?"
Quoth Khawla in alarm.
"Danger ... death ... judgement!" Maimuna replied.
"Is that the language of the lights of Heaven?"
Exclaimed the sterner Witch.
"Creatures of Allah, they perform his will.
"And with their lying menaces would daunt
"Our credulous folly.... Maimuna,
"I never liked this uncongenial lore!
"Better befits to make the sacrifice
"Of Divination; so shall I
"Be mine own Oracle.
"Command the victims thou, O King!
"Male and female they must be,
"Thou knowest the needful rites.
"Meanwhile I purify the place."
The Sultan went; the Sorceress rose,
She faced the points of Heaven,
And ever where she turned
She laid her hand upon the wall,
And up she looked and smote the air,
And down she stooped and smote the floor,
"To Eblis and his servants
"I consecrate the place,
"Let none intrude but they!
"Whatever hath the breath of life,
"Whatever hath the sap of life,
"Let it be blasted and die!"
Now all is prepared;
Mohareb returns,
The Circle is drawn,
The Victims have bled,
She in the circle holds in either hand
Clenched by the hair, a head,
The heads of the Youth and the Maid.
"Go out ye lights!" quoth Khawla,
And in darkness began the spell.
With spreading arms she whirls around
Rapidly, rapidly
Ever around and around;
And loudly she calls the while
Loudly, incessantly,
Still she calls "Eblis! Eblis!"
Giddily, giddily, still she whirls,
Loudly, incessantly, still she calls;
The motion is ever the same,
Ever around and around;
The calling is still the same
And her voice is a shapeless yell,
And dizzily rolls her brain,
And now she is full of the Fiend.
She stops, she rocks, she reels!
Look! look! she appears in the darkness!
Her flamy hairs curl up
All living, like the Meteor's locks of light!
Her eyes are like the sickly Moon!
It is her lips that move,
Her tongue that shapes the sound,
But whose is the Voice that proceeds?
"Ye may hope and ye may fear,
"The danger of his stars is near.
"Sultan! if he perish, woe!
"Fate has written one death-blow
"Triumph! triumph! only she
"That knit his bonds can set him free."
She spake the Oracle,
And senselessly she fell.
They knelt in care beside her,
They sprinkled her palms with water,
They wetted her nostrils with blood.
She wakes as from a dream,
She asks the uttered Voice,
But when she heard, an anger and a grief
Darkened her wrinkling brow.
"Then let him live in long captivity!"
She answered: but Mohareb's quickened eye
Perused her sullen countenance
That lied not with the lips.
A miserable man!
What boots it, that, in central caves
The Powers of Evil at his Baptism pledged
His death secures them now.
What boots it that they gave
Abdaldar's guardian ring,
When thro' another's life
The blow may reach his own?
He sought the dungeon cell
Where Thalaba was laid.
'Twas the grey morning twilight, and the voice
Of Thalaba in prayer,
With words of hallowed import, smote
The King's alarmed sense.
The grating of the heavy hinge
Roused not the Arabian youth;
Nor lifted he his earthward face
At sound of coming feet.
Nor did Mohareb with unholy voice
Disturb the duty: silent, spirit-awed,
Envious, heart-humbled, he beheld
The dungeon-peace of piety
Till Thalaba, the perfect rite performed,
Raised his calm eye; then spake the Island-Chief.
"Arab! my guidance thro' the dangerous Cave,
"Thy service overpaid,
"An unintended friend in enmity.
"The hand that caught thy ring
"Received and bore me to the scene I sought.
"Now know me grateful. I return
"That amulet, thy only safety here."
Artful he spake, with show of gratitude
Veiling the selfish deed.
Locked in the magic chain
The powerless hand of Thalaba
Received again the Spell.
Remembering then with what an ominous faith
First he drew on the gem,
The Youth repeats his words of augury;
"In God's name and the Prophet's! be its power
"Good, let it serve the holy! if for evil
"God and my faith shall hallow it.
"Blindly the wicked work
"The righteous will of Heaven!"
So Thalaba received again
The written ring of gold.
Thoughtful awhile Mohareb stood
And eyed the captive youth.
Then, building skilfully the sophist speech,
Thus he began. "Brave art thou, Thalaba!
"And wherefore are we foes!... for I would buy
"Thy friendship at a princely price, and make thee
"To thine own welfare wise.
"Hear me! in Nature are two hostile Gods,
"Makers and Masters of existing things,
"Equal in power:... nay hear me patiently!...
"Equal ... for look around thee! the same Earth
"Bears fruit and poison; where the Camel finds
"His fragrant food, the horned Viper there
"Sucks in the juice of death; the Elements
"Now serve the use of man, and now assert
"Dominion o'er his weakness; dost thou hear
"The sound of merriment and nuptial song?
"From the next house proceeds the mourner's cry
"Lamenting o'er the dead. Sayest thou that Sin
"Entered the world of Allah? that the Fiend
"Permitted for a season, prowls for prey?
"When to thy tent the venomous serpent creeps
"Dost thou not crush the reptile? even so,
"Besure, had Allah crushed his Enemy,
"But that the power was wanting. From the first,
"Eternal as themselves their warfare is,
"To the end it must endure. Evil and Good....
"What are they Thalaba but words? in the strife
"Of Angels, as of men, the weak are guilty;
"Power must decide. The Spirits of the Dead
"Quitting their mortal mansion, enter not,
"As falsely ye are preached, their final seat
"Of bliss, or bale; nor in the sepulchre
"Sleep they the long long sleep: each joins the host
"Of his great Leader, aiding in the war
"Whose fate involves his own.
"Woe to the vanquished then!
"Woe to the sons of man who followed him!
"They with their Leader, thro' eternity,
"Must howl in central fires.
"Thou Thalaba hast chosen ill thy part,
"If choice it may be called, where will was not,
"Nor searching doubt, nor judgement wise to weigh.
"Hard is the service of the Power beneath
"Whose banners thou wert born; his discipline
"Severe, yea cruel; and his wages, rich
"Only in promise; who has seen the pay?
"For us ... the pleasures of the world are ours,
"Riches and rule, the kingdoms of the Earth.
"We met in Babylon adventurers both,
"Each zealous for the hostile Power he served:
"We meet again; thou feelest what thou art,
"Thou seest what I am, the Sultan here,
"Abandon him who has abandoned thee,
"And be as I am, great among mankind!"
The Captive did not, hasty to confute
Break of that subtle speech,
But when the expectant silence of the King
Looked for his answer, then spake Thalaba.
"And this then is thy faith! this monstrous creed!
"This lie against the Sun and Moon and Stars
"And Earth and Heaven! blind man who canst not see
"How all things work the best! who wilt not know
"That in the Manhood of the World, whate'er
"Of folly marked its Infancy, of vice
"Sullied its Youth, ripe Wisdom shall cast off,
"Stablished in good, and knowing evil safe.
"Sultan Mohareb, yes, ye have me here
"In chains; but not forsaken, tho' opprest:
"Cast down, but not destroyed. Shall danger daunt,
"Shall death dismay his soul, whose life is given
"For God and for his brethren of mankind?
"Alike rewarded, in that noble cause,
"The Conquerors and the Martyrs palm above
"Beam with one glory. Hope ye that my blood
"Can quench the dreaded flame? and know ye not
"That leagued against you are the Just and Wise,
"And all Good Actions of all ages past,
"Yea your own Crimes, and Truth, and God in Heaven!"
"Slave!" quoth Mohareb, and his lips
Quivered with eager wrath.
"I have thee! thou shalt feel my power,
"And in thy dungeon loathsomeness
"Rot piece-meal, limb from limb!"
And out the Tyrant rushes,
And all impatient of the thoughts
That cankered in his heart,
Seeks in the giddiness of boisterous sport
Short respite from the avenging power within.
So wrinkled and old,
That goes to the wood?
She leans on her staff
With a tottering step,
She tells her bead-strings slow
Thro' fingers dulled by age.
The wanton boys bemock her.
The babe in arms that meets her
Turns round with quick affright
And clings to his nurse's neck.
Hark! hark! the hunter's cry
Mohareb gone to the chase!
The dogs with eager yell
Are struggling to be free;
The hawks in frequent stoop
Token their haste for flight;
And couchant on the saddle-bow,
With tranquil eyes and talons sheathed
The ounce expects his liberty.
Propt on the staff that shakes
Beneath her trembling weight,
The Old Woman sees them pass.
Halloa! halloa!
The game is up!
The dogs are loosed
The deer bounds over the plain,
The lagging dogs behind
Follow from afar!
But lo! the Falcon o'er his head.
Hovers with hostile wings,
And buffets him with blinding strokes!
Dizzy with the deafening strokes
In blind and interrupted course,
Poor beast be struggles on;
And now the dogs are nigh!
How his heart pants! you see
The panting of his heart;
And tears like human tears
Roll down, along the big veins, fever-swoln;
And now the death-sweat darkens his dun hide!
His fear, his groans, his agony, his death,
Are the sport and the joy and the triumph!
Halloa! another prey,
The nimble Antelope!
The Ounce is freed; one spring
And his talons are sheathed in her shoulders,
And his teeth are red in her gore.
There came a sound from the wood,
Like the howl of the winter wind at night
Around a lonely dwelling,
The Ounce whose gums were warm in his prey
He hears the summoning sound.
In vain his master's voice
No longer dreaded now,
Calls and recalls with threatful tone.
Away to the forest he goes,
For that Old Woman had laid
Her shrivelled finger on her shrivelled lips,
And whistled with a long, long breath,
And that long breath was the sound
Like the howl of the winter wind at night
Around a lonely dwelling.
Mohareb knew her not,
As to the chase he went,
The glance of his proud eye
Passing in scorn o'er age and wretchedness.
She stands in the depth of the wood,
And panting to her feet
Fawning and fearful creeps the charmed ounce.
Well mayst thou fear, and vainly dost thou fawn!
Her form is changed, her visage new,
Her power, her heart the same!
It is Khawla that stands in the wood.
She knew the place where the mandrake grew,
And round the neck of the ounce,
And round the mandrake's head
She tightens the ends of her cord.
Her ears are closed with wax,
And her prest finger fastens them,
Deaf as the Adder, when with grounded head
And circled form, her avenues of sound
Barred safely, one slant eye
Watches the charmer's lips
Waste on the wind his baffled witchery.
The spotted ounce so beautiful
Springs forceful from the scourge:
The dying plant all agony,
Feeling its life-strings crack,
Uttered the unimaginable groan
That none can hear and live.
Then from her victim servant Khawla loosed
The precious poison, next with naked hand
She plucked the boughs of the manchineel.
Then of the wormy wax she took,
That from the perforated tree forced out,
Bewrayed its insect-parent's work within.
In a cavern of the wood she sits
And moulds the wax to human form,
And as her fingers kneaded it,
By magic accents, to the mystic shape
Imparted with the life of Thalaba,
In all its passive powers
Mysterious sympathy.
She builds her pile accurst.
She lays her finger to the pile,
And blue and green, the flesh
Glows with emitted fire,
A fire to kindle that strange fuel meet.
Before the fire she placed the imaged wax,
"There waste away!" the Enchantress cried,
"And with thee waste Hodeirah's Son!"
Fool! fool! go thaw the everlasting ice,
Whose polar mountains bound the human reign.
Blindly the wicked work
The righteous will of Heaven!
The doomed Destroyer wears Abdaldar's ring!
Against the danger of his horoscope
Yourselves have shielded him!
And on the sympathizing wax
The unadmitted flames play powerlessly,
As the cold moon-beam on a plain of snow.
"Curse thee! curse thee!" cried the fiendly woman,
"Hast thou yet a spell of safety?"
And in the raging flames
She cast the imaged wax.
It lay amid the flames,
Like Polycarp of old,
When by the glories of the burning stake
O'er vaulted, his grey hairs
Curled, life-like, to the fire
That haloed round his saintly brow.
"Wherefore is this!" cried Khawla, and she stamped
Thrice on the cavern floor,
Thrice on the floor she stamped,
Then to the rocky gateway glanced
Her eager eyes, and Maimuna was there.
"Nay Sister, nay!" quoth she, "Mohareb's life
"Is linked with Thalaba's!
"Nay Sister, nay! the plighted oath!
"The common Sacrament!"
"Faith kept with him were treason to the rest.
"Why lies the wax, like marble, in the fire?
"What powerful amulet
"Protects Hodeirah's son?"
Cold, marble-cold, the wax
Lay on the raging pile,
Cold in that white intensity of fire.
The Bat that with her hooked and leathery wings
Clung to the cave-roof, loosed her hold,
Death-sickening with the heat;
The Toad who to the darkest nook had crawled
Panted fast with fever pain;
The Viper from her nest came forth
Leading her quickened brood,
Who sportive with the warm delight, rolled out
Their thin curls, tender as the tendril rings,
Ere the green beauty of their brittle youth
Grows brown, and toughens in the summer sun.
Cold, marble-cold, the wax
Lay on the raging pile,
The silver quivering of the element
O'er its pale surface shedding a dim gloss.
Amid the red and fiery smoke,
Watching the strange portent,
The blue-eyed Sorceress and her Sister stood,
Seeming a ruined Angel by the side
Of Spirit born in Hell.
At length raised Maimuna her thoughtful eyes,
"The work of the worm, or the bee?
"Nay then I marvel not!
"It were as wise to bring from Ararat
"The fore-world's wood to build the magic pile,
"And feed it from the balm bower, thro' whose veins
"The Martyr's blood sends such a virtue out,
"That the fond Mother from beneath its shade
"Wreathes the Cerastes round her playful child.
"This the eternal, universal strife!
"There is a grave-wax,... I have seen the Gouls
"Fight for the dainty at their banquetting."...
"Excellent witch!" quoth Khawla; and she went
To the cave arch of entrance, and scowled up,
Mocking the blessed Sun,
"Shine thou in Heaven, but I will shadow Earth!
"Thou wilt not shorten day,
"But I will hasten darkness!" Then the Witch
Began a magic song,
One long low tone thro' teeth half-closed,
Thro' lips slow-moving muttered slow,
One long-continued breath,
Till to her eyes a darker yellowness
Was driven, and fuller swoln the prominent veins
On her loose throat grew black.
Then looking upward thrice she breathed
Into the face of Heaven,
The baneful breath infected Heaven;
A mildewing mist it spread
Darker and darker; so the evening sun
Poured his unentering glory on the mist,
And it was night below.
"Bring now the wax," quoth Khawla, "for thou knowest
"The mine that yields it!" forth went Maimuna,
In mist and darkness went the Sorceress forth.
And she has reached the place of Tombs,
And in their sepulchres the dead
Feel feet unholy trampling over them.
Thou startest Maimuna,
Because the breeze is in thy lilted locks!
Is Khawla's spell so weak?
Sudden came the breeze and strong;
The mist that in the labouring lungs was felt
So heavy late, flies now before the gale,
Thin as an Infant's breath
Seen in the sunshine of an autumn frost.
Sudden it came and soon its work was done,
And suddenly it ceased;
Cloudless and calm it left the firmament,
And beautiful in the blue sky
Arose the summer Moon.
She heard the quickened action of her blood,
She felt the fever in her cheeks.
Daunted, yet desperate, in a tomb
Entering, with impious hand she traced
Circles, and squares, and trines,
And magic characters,
Till riven by her charms the grave
Yawned and disclosed its dead,
Maimuna's eyes were opened, and she saw
The secrets of the grave.
There sate a Spirit in the vault,
In shape, in hue, in lineaments like life,
And by him couched, as if intranced,
The hundred-headed Worm that never dies.
"Nay Sorceress! not to-night!" the Spirit cried,
"The flesh in which I sinned may rest to-night
"From suffering; all things, even I to-night,
"Even the Damned repose!"
The flesh of Maimuna
Crept on her bones with terror, and her knees
Trembled with their trembling weight.
"Only this sabbath! and at dawn the Worm
"Will wake, and this poor flesh must grow to meet
"The gnawing of his hundred poison-mouths!
"God! God! Is there no mercy after death?"
Soul-struck she rushed away,
She fled the place of Tombs,
She cast herself upon the earth,
All agony and tumult and despair.
And in that wild and desperate agony
Sure Maimuna had died the utter death,
If aught of evil had been possible
On this mysterious night;
For this was that most holy night
When all created things know and adore
The Power that made them; insects, beasts, and birds,
The water-dwellers, herbs and trees and stones,
Yea Earth and Ocean and the infinite Heaven
With all its worlds. Man only does not know
The universal sabbath, does not join
With Nature in her homage. Yet the prayer
Flows from the righteous with intenser love,
A holier calm succeeds, and sweeter dreams
Visit the slumbers of the penitent.
Therefore on Maimuna the elements,
Shed healing; every breath she breathed was balm.
Was not a flower but sent in incense up
Its richest odours, and the song of birds
Now, like the music of the Seraphim,
Entered her soul, and now
Made silence aweful by their sudden pause.
It seemed as if the quiet moon
Poured quietness, its lovely light
Was like the smile of reconciling Heaven.
Is it the dew of night
That down her glowing cheek
Shines in the moon-beam? oh! she weeps ... she weeps
And the Good Angel that abandoned her
At her hell-baptism, by her tears drawn down
Resumes his charge, then Maimuna
Recalled to mind the double oracle;
Quick as the lightening flash
Its import glanced upon her, and the hope
Of pardon and salvation rose,
As now she understood
The lying prophecy of truth.
She pauses not, she ponders not,
The driven air before her fanned the face
Of Thalaba, and he awoke and saw
The Sorceress of the silver locks.
One more permitted spell!
She takes the magic chain.
With the wide eye of wonder, Thalaba
Watches her snowy fingers round and round
Wind the loosening chain.
Again he hears the low sweet voice,
The low sweet voice so musical,
That sure it was not strange,
If in those unintelligible tones
Was more than human potency,
That with such deep and undefined delight,
Filled the surrendered soul.
The work is done, the song is ceased;
He wakes as from a dream of Paradise
And feels his fetters gone, and with the burst
Of wondering adoration praises God.
Her charm has loosed the chain it bound,
But massy walls and iron gates
Confine Hodeirah's son.
Heard ye not, Genii of the Air, her spell,
That o'er her face there flits
The sudden flush of fear?
Again her louder lips repeat the charm,
Her eye is anxious, her cheek pale,
Her pulse plays fast and feeble.
Nay Maimuna! thy power has ceased,
And the wind scatters now
The voice that ruled it late.
"Pray for me, Thalaba," she cried,
"For death and judgement are at hand!"
All night in agony,
She feared the instant blow of Hell's revenge.
At dawn the sound of gathering multitudes
Led to the prison bars her dreading eye.
What spectacle invites
The growing multitude,
That torrent-like they roll along?
Boys and grey-headed age; the Mother comes
Leading her child, who at arm's length
Outstripping her, looks back
And bids her hasten more.
Why does the City pour her thousands forth?
What glorious pageantry
Makes her streets desolate, and silences
Her empty dwellings? comes the bridal pomp,
And have the purveyors of imperial lust
Torn from their parents arms again
The virgin beauties of the land?
Will elephants in gilded cages bear
The imprisoned victims? or may yet their eyes
With a last look of liberty, behold
Banners and guards and silk-arched palanquins.
The long procession, and the gorgeous pomp
Of their own sacrifice?
On the house tops and in the windows ranged
Face above face, they wait
The coming spectacle;
The trees are clustered, and below the dust
Thro' the thronged populace
Can find no way to rise.
He comes! the Sultan! hark the swelling horn,
The trumpet's spreading blair,
The timbrel tinkling as its silver bells
Twinkle aloft, and the shrill cymbal's sound,
Whose broad brass flashes in the morning sun
Accordant light and music! closing all
The heavy Gong is heard,
That falls like thunder on the dizzy ear.
On either hand the thick-wedged crowd
Fall from the royal path.
Recumbent in the palanquin he casts
On the wide tumult of the waving throng
A proud and idle eye.
Now in his tent alighted, he receives
Homage and worship. The slave multitude
With shouts of blasphemy adore
Him, father of his people! him their Lord!
Great King, all-wise, all-mighty, and all-good!
Whose smile was happiness, whose frown was death,
Their present Deity!
With silken cords his slaves
Wave the silk fan, that waving o'er his head
Freshens the languid air.
Others the while shower o'er his robes
The rose's treasured sweets,
Rich odours burn before him, ambergrese,
Sandal and aloe wood,
And thus inhaling the voluptuous air
He sits to watch the agony,
To hear the groan of death.
At once all sounds are hushed,
All eyes take one direction, for he comes,
The object he of this day's festival,
Of all this expectation and this joy,
The Christian captive. Hark! so silently
They stand, the clanking of his chain is heard.
And he has reached the place of suffering now.
And as the death's-men round his ancles bind
The cords and to the gibbet swing him up,
The Priests begin their song, the song of praise,
The hymn of glory to their Devil-God.
Then Maimuna grew pale, as thro the bars
She saw the Martyr pendant by the feet,
His gold locks hanging downwards, and she cried,
"This is my Sister's deed!
"Not for his faith the red-haired Christian dies.
"She wants the foam that in his agony,
"Last from his lips shall fall,
"The deadliest poison that the Devils know.
"Son of Hodeirah, thou and I
"Shall prove its deadly force!"
And lo! the Executioners begin
And beat his belly with alternate blows.
And these are human that look on;...
The very women that would shrink
And shudder if they saw a worm
Crushed by the careless tread,
They clap their hands for joy
And lift their children up
To see the Christian die.
Convulsing Nature with her tortures drunk
Ceases to suffer now.
His eye-lids tremble, his lips quake,
But like the quivering of a severed limb
Move no responsive pang.
Now catch the exquisite poison! for it froths
His dying lips,... and Khawla holds the bowl.
Enough the Island crimes had cried to Heaven,
The measure of their guilt was full,
The hour of wrath was come.
The poison burst the bowl,
It fell upon the earth.
The Sorceress shrieked and caught Mohareb's robe
And called the whirlwind and away!
For lo! from that accursed venom springs,
Alone, beside a rivulet it stands
Thro' barren banks the barren waters flow,
The fish that meets them in the unmingling sea
Floats poisoned on the waves.
Tree grows not near, nor bush, nor flower, nor herb,
The Earth has lost its parent powers of life
And the fresh dew of Heaven that there descends,
Steams in rank poison up.
Before the appointed Youth and Maimuna
Saw the first struggle of the dying throng,
Crash sunk their prison wall!
The whirlwind wrapt them round;
Ere there was time to fear, their way was past,
And lo! again they stand
In the cave-dwelling of the blue-eyed Witch.
Then came the weakness of her natural age
At once on Maimuna;
The burthen of her years
Fell on her, and she knew
That her repentance in the sight of God
Had now found favour, and her hour was come.
Her death was like the righteous; "Turn my face
"To Mecca!" in her languid eyes.
The joy of certain hope
Lit a last lustre, and in death
The smile was on her cheek.
No faithful crowded round her bier,
No tongue reported her good deeds,
For her no mourners wailed and wept,
No Iman o'er her perfumed corpse,
For her soul's health intoned the prayer;
No column raised by the way side
Implored the passing traveller
To say a requiem for the dead.
Thalaba laid her in the snow,
And took his weapons from the hearth,
And then once more the youth began
His weary way of solitude.
The breath of the East is in his face
And it drives the sleet and the snow.
The air is keen, the wind is keen,
His limbs are aching with the cold,
His eyes are aching with the snow,
His very heart is cold,
His spirit chilled within him. He looks on
If ought of life be near,
But all is sky and the white wilderness,
And here and there a solitary pine,
Its branches broken by the weight of snow.
His pains abate, his senses dull
With suffering, cease to suffer.
Languidly, languidly,
Thalaba drags along,
A heavy weight is on his lids,
His limbs move slow with heaviness,
And he full fain would sleep.
Not yet, not yet, O Thalaba!
Thy hour of rest is come;
Not yet may the Destroyer sleep
The comfortable sleep,
His journey is not over yet,
His course not yet fulfilled;...
Run thou thy race, O Thalaba!
The prize is at the goal.
It was a Cedar-tree
That woke him from the deadly drowsiness;
Its broad, round-spreading branches when they felt
The snow, rose upward in a point to heaven,
And standing in their strength erect,
Defied the baffled storm.
He knew the lesson Nature gave,
And he shook off his heaviness,
And hope revived within him.
Now sunk the evening sun,
A broad, red, beamless orb,
Adown the glowing sky;
Thro' the red light the snow-flakes fell, like fire.
Louder grows the biting wind,
And it drifts the dust of the snow.
The snow is clotted in his hair,
The breath of Thalaba
Is iced upon his lips.
He looks around, the darkness,
The dizzy floating of the snow,
Close in his narrow view.
At length thro' the thick atmosphere a light
Not distant far appears.
He doubting other wiles of enmity,
With mingled joy and quicker step,
Bends his way thitherward.
It was a little, lowly dwelling place,
Amid a garden, whose delightful air
Felt mild and fragrant, as the evening wind
Passing in summer o'er the coffee-groves
Of Yemen and its blessed bowers of balm.
A Fount of Fire that in the centre played,
Rolled all around its wonderous rivulets
And fed the garden with the heat of life.
Every where magic! the Arabian's heart
Yearned after human intercourse.
A light!... the door unclosed!...
All silent ... he goes in.
There lay a Damsel sleeping on a couch,
His step awoke her, and she gazed at him
With pleased and wondering look,
Fearlessly, like a yearling child
Too ignorant to fear.
With words of courtesy
The young intruder spake.
At the sound of his voice a joy
Kindled her bright black eyes;
She rose and took his hand,
But at the touch the smile forsook her cheek,
"Oh! it is cold!" she cried,
"I thought I should have felt it warm like mine,
"But thou art like the rest!"
Thalaba stood mute awhile
And wondering at her words:
"Cold? Lady!" then he said; "I have travelled long
"In this cold wilderness,
"Till life is almost spent!"
Art thou a Man then?
I did not think
Sorrow and toil could so have altered me,
That I seem otherwise.
And thou canst be warm
Sometimes? life-warm as I am?
As others are, I am, to heat and cold
Subject like all, you see a Traveller,
Bound upon hard adventure, who requests
Only to rest him here to-night, to-morrow
He will pursue his way.
Oh ... not to-morrow!
Not like a dream of joy, depart so soon!
And whither wouldst thou go? for all around
Is everlasting winter, ice and snow,
Deserts unpassable of endless frost.
He who has led me here will still sustain me
Thro' cold and hunger.
"Hunger?" Laila cried;
She clapt her lilly hands,
And whether from above or from below
It came, sight could not see,
So suddenly the floor was spread with food.
Why dost thou watch with hesitating eyes
The banquet? 'tis for thee! I bade it come.
Whence came it?
Matters it from whence it came
My father sent it: when I call, he hears.
Nay ... thou hast fabled with me! and art like
The forms that wait upon my solitude,
Human to eye alone;... thy hunger would not
Question so idly else.
I will not eat!
It came by magic! fool to think that aught
But fraud and danger could await me here!
Let loose my cloak!...
Begone then, insolent!
Why dost thou stand and gaze upon my face?
Aye! watch the features well that threaten thee
With fraud and danger! in the wilderness
They shall avenge me,... in the hour of want
Rise on thy view, and make thee feel
How innocent I am:
And this remembered cowardice and insult
With a more painful shame will burn thy cheek
Than now beats mine in anger!
Many and restless are my enemies;
My daily paths have been beset with snares
Till I have learnt suspicion, bitter sufferings
Teaching the needful vice, if I have wronged you,
And yours should be the face of innocence,
I pray you pardon me! in the name of God,
And of his Prophet, I partake your food.
Lo now! thou wert afraid of sorcery,
And yet hast said a charm!
A charm?
And wherefore?
Is it not not delicate food? what mean thy words?
I have heard many spells and many names
That rule the Genii and the Elements,
But never these.
How! never heard the names
Again that troubled eye? thou art a strange man
And wonderous fearful ... but I must not twice
Be charged with fraud! if thou suspectest still,
Depart and leave me!
And you do not know
The God that made you?
Made me, man! my Father
Made me. He made this dwelling, and the grove,
And yonder fountain-fire, and every morn
He visits me, and takes the snow, and moulds
Women and men, like thee; and breathes into them
Motion, and life, and sense,... but to the touch
They are chilling cold, and ever when night closes
They melt away again, and leave me here
Alone and sad. Oh then how I rejoice
When it is day and my dear Father comes,
And chears me with kind words and kinder looks!
My dear, dear, Father! were it not for him,
I am so weary of this loneliness,
That I should wish I also were of snow
That I might melt away, and cease to be.
And have you always had your dwelling here
Amid this solitude of snow?
I think so.
I can remember with unsteady feet
Tottering from room to room, and finding pleasure
In flowers and toys and sweetmeats, things that long
Have lost their power to please; that when I see them
Raise only now a melancholy wish
I were the little trifler once again
That could be pleased so lightly!
Then you know not
Your Father's art?
No. I besought him once
To give me power like his, that where he went
I might go with him: but he shook his head,
And said it was a power too dearly bought,
And kist me with the tenderness of tears.
And wherefore has he hidden you thus far
From all the ways of humankind?
'Twas fear,
Fatherly fear and love. He read the stars
And saw a danger in my destiny,
And therefore placed me here amid the snows,
And laid a spell that never human eye,
If foot of man by chance should reach the depth
Of this wide waste, shall see one trace of grove,
Garden, or dwelling-place, or yonder fire,
That thaws and mitigates the frozen sky.
And more than this, even if the enemy
Should come, I have a guardian here.
A guardian?
'Twas well that when my sight unclosed upon thee
There was no dark suspicion in thy face.
Else I had called his succour! wilt thou see him?
But if a Woman can have terrified thee,
How wilt thou bare his unrelaxing brow
And lifted lightnings?
Lead me to him, Lady!
She took him by the hand
And thro' the porch they past.
Over the garden and the grove
The fountain streams of fire
Poured a broad light like noon.
A broad unnatural light
That made the Rose's blush of beauty pale,
And dimmed the rich Geranium's scarlet blaze.
The various verdure of the grove
Now wore one undistinguishable grey,
Checqured with blacker shade.
Suddenly Laila stopt,
"I do not think thou art the enemy,"
She said, "but He will know!
"If thou hast meditated wrong
"Stranger, depart in time....
"I would not lead thee to thy death!"
The glance of Laila's eye
Turned anxiously toward the Arabian youth.
"So let him pierce my heart," cried Thalaba,
"If it hide thought to harm you!"
'Tis a figure,
Almost I fear to look at!... yet come on.
'Twill ease me of a heaviness that seems
To sink my heart; and thou mayest dwell here then.
In safety;... for thou shalt not go to-morrow,
Nor on the after, nor the after day,
Nor ever! it was only solitude
That made my misery here,...
And now that I can see a human face,
And hear a human voice....
Oh no! thou wilt not leave me!
Alas I must not rest!
The star that ruled at my nativity
Shone with a strange and blasting influence.
O gentle Lady! I should draw upon you
A killing curse.
But I will ask my Father
To save you from all danger, and you know not
The wonders he can work, and when I ask
It is not in his power to say me nay.
Perhaps thou knowest the happiness it is
To have a tender father?
He was one
Whom like a loathsome leper I have tainted
With my contagious destiny. At evening
He kist me as he wont, and laid his hands
Upon my head, and blest me ere I slept.
His dying groan awoke me, for the Murderer
Had stolen upon our sleep! for me was meant
The midnight blow of death; my father died,
The brother play-mates of my infancy,
The baby at the breast, they perished all,
All in that dreadful hour: but I was saved
To remember and revenge.
She answered not, for now
Emerging from the o'er-arched avenue
The finger of her upraised hand
Marked where the Guardian of the garden stood.
It was a brazen Image, every limb
And swelling vein and muscle, true to life:
The left knee bending on,
The other straight, firm planted, and his hand
Lifted on high to hurl
The Lightning that it grasped.
When Thalaba approached,
The charmed Image knew Hodeirah's son,
And hurled the lightning at the dreaded foe.
The Ring! the saviour Ring!
Full in his face the lightning-bolt was driven,
The scattered fire recoiled.
Like the flowing of a summer gale he felt
Its ineffectual force,
His countenance was not changed,
Nor a hair of his head was singed.
He started and his glance
Turned angrily upon the Maid,
The sight disarmed suspicion ... breathless, pale,
Against a tree she stood.
Her wan lips quivering, and her eye
Upraised, in silent supplicating fear.
She started with a scream of joy
Seeing her Father there,
And ran and threw her arms around his neck,
"Save me!" she cried, "the Enemy is come!
"Save me! save me! Okba!"
"Okba!" repeats the youth,
For never since that hour
When in the Tent the Spirit told his name,
Had Thalaba let slip
The memory of his Father's murderer;
"Okba!"... and in his hand
He graspt an arrow-shaft.
And he rushed on to strike him.
"Son of Hodeirah!" the Old Man replied,
"My hour is not yet come."
And putting forth his hand
Gently he repelled the Youth.
"My hour is not yet come!
"But thou mayest shed this innocent Maiden's blood,
"That vengeance God allows thee."
Around her Father's neck
Still Laila's hands were clasped.
Her face was turned to Thalaba,
A broad light floated o'er its marble paleness,
As the wind waved the fountain fire.
Her large, dilated eye in horror raised
Watched his every movement.
"Not upon her," said he,
"Not upon her Hodeirah's blood cries out
"For vengeance!" and again his lifted arm
Again withheld it felt
The barrier that no human strength could burst.
"Thou dost not aim the blow more eagerly,"
Okba replied, "than I would rush to meet it!
"But that were poor revenge.
"Wreaks on the innocent head
"His vengeance;... I must suffer in my child!
"Why dost thou pause to strike thy victim? Allah
"Permits, commands the deed."
"Liar!" quoth Thalaba.
And Laila's wondering eye
Looked up, all anguish to her Father's face,
"By Allah and the Prophet," he replied,
"I speak the words of truth.
"Misery, misery,
"That I must beg mine enemy to speed
"The inevitable vengeance now so near!
"I read it in her horoscope,
"Her birth-star warned me of Hodeirah's race.
"I laid a spell, and called a Spirit up.
"He answered one must die
"Accursed Spirit! even in truth
"Giving a lying hope!
"Last, I ascended the seventh Heaven
"And on the everlasting Table there
"In characters of light,
"I read her written doom.
"The years that it has gnawn me! and the load
"Of sin that it has laid upon my soul!
"Curse on this hand that in the only hour
"The favouring stars allowed
"Reeked with other blood than thine.
"Still dost thou stand and gaze incredulous?
"Young man, be merciful, and keep her not
"Longer in agony!"
Thalaba's unbelieving frown
When in the air the rush of wings was heard
And Azrael stood among them.
In equal terror at the sight
The Enchanter, the Destroyer stood,
And Laila, the victim maid.
"Son of Hodeirah!" said the Angel of Death,
"The accursed fables not.
"When from the Eternal Hand I took
"The yearly scroll of fate,
"Her name was written there.
"This is the hour, and from thy hands
"Commissioned to receive the Maid I come."
"Hear me O Angel!" Thalaba replied,
"To avenge my Father's death,
"To work the will of Heaven,
"To root from earth the accursed sorcerer race,
"I have dared danger undismayed,
"I have lost all my soul held dear,
"I am cut off from all the ties of life,
"Unmurmuring; for whate'er awaits me still,
"Pursuing to the end the enterprize,
"Peril or pain, I bear a ready heart.
"But strike this Maid! this innocent!
"Angel, I dare not do it."
"Remember," answered Azrael, "all thou sayest
"Is written down for judgement! every word
"In the balance of thy trial must be weighed!"
"So be it!" said the Youth.
"He who can read the secrets of the heart
"Will judge with righteousness!
"This is no doubtful path,
"The voice of God within me cannot lie....
"I will not harm the innocent."
He said, and from above,
As tho' it were the Voice of Night,
The startling answer came.
"Son of Hodeirah, think again!
"One must depart from hence,
"She dies for thee, or thou for her,
"It must be life for life!
"Son of Hodeirah, weigh it well,
"While yet the choice is thine!"
He hesitated not,
But looking upward spread his hands to Heaven,
"Oneiza, in thy bower of Paradise
"Receive me, still unstained!"
"What!" exclaimed Okba, "darest thou disobey,
"Abandoning all claim
"To Allah's longer aid?"
The eager exultation of his speech
Earthward recalled the thoughts of Thalaba.
"And dost thou triumph, Murderer? dost thou deem
"Because I perish, that the unsleeping lids
"Of Justice shall be closed upon thy crime?
"Poor, miserable man! that thou canst live
"With such beast-blindness in the present joy
"When o'er thy head the sword of God
"Hangs for the certain stroke!"
"Servant of Allah, thou hast disobeyed,
"God hath abandoned thee,
"This hour is mine!" cried Okba,
And shook his Daughter off,
And drew the dagger from his vest.
And aimed the deadly blow.
All was accomplished. Laila rushed between
To save the saviour Youth.
She met the blow and sunk into his arms,
And Azrael from the hands of Thalaba
Received her parting soul.
O fool to think thy human hand
Could check the chariot-wheels of Destiny
To dream of weakness in the all-knowing Mind
That his decrees should change!
To hope that the united Powers
Might blot one letter from the Book of Fate,
Might break one link of the eternal chain!
Thou miserable, wicked, poor old man,
Fall now upon the body of thy child,
Beat now thy breast, and pluck the bleeding hairs
From thy grey beard, and lay
Thine ineffectual hand to close her wound.
And call on Hell to aid,
And call on Heaven to send
Its merciful thunderbolt!
The young Arabian silently
Beheld his frantic grief.
The presence of the hated youth
To raging anguish stung
The wretched Sorcerer.
"Aye! look and triumph!" he exclaimed,
"This is the justice of thy God!
"A righteous God is he, to let
"His vengeance fall upon the innocent head!
"Curse thee, curse thee, Thalaba!"
All feelings of revenge
Had left Hodeirah's son.
Pitying and silently he heard
The victim of his own iniquities,
Not with the busy hand
Of Consolation, fretting the sore wound
He could not hope to heal.
So as the Servant of the Prophet stood,
With sudden motion the night air
Gently fanned his cheek.
'Twas a Green Bird whose wings
Had waved the quiet air.
On the hand of Thalaba
The Green Bird perched, and turned
A mild eye up, as if to win
The Adventurer's confidence.
Then springing on flew forward,
And now again returns
To court him to the way;
And now his hand perceives
Her rosy feet press firmer, as she leaps
Upon the wing again.
Obedient to the call,
By the pale moonlight Thalaba pursued
O'er trackless snows his way;
Unknowing he what blessed messenger
Had come to guide his steps,
That Laila's Spirit went before his path.
Brought up in darkness and the child of sin,
Yet as the meed of spotless innocence,
Just Heaven permitted her by one good deed
To work her own redemption, after death;
So till the judgement day
She might abide in bliss,
Green warbler of the Bowers of Paradise.
The morning sun came forth,
Wakening no eye to life
In this wide solitude;
His radiance with a saffron hue, like heat,
Suffused the desert snow.
The Green Bird guided Thalaba,
Now oaring with slow wing her upward way,
Descending now in slant descent
On out-spread pinions motionless,
Floating now with rise and fall alternate,
As if the billows of the air
Heaved her with their sink and swell.
And when, beneath the noon,
The icey glitter of the snow
Dazzled his aching sight,
Then on his arm alighted the Green Bird
And spread before his eyes
Her plumage of refreshing hue.
Evening came on; the glowing clouds
Tinged with a purple ray the mountain ridge
That lay before the Traveller.
Ah! whither art thou gone,
Guide and companion of the youth, whose eye
Has lost thee in the depth of Heaven?
Why hast thou left alone
The weary wanderer in the wilderness?
And now the western clouds grow pale
And Night descends upon his solitude.
The Arabian youth knelt down,
And bowed his forehead to the ground
And made his evening prayer.
When he arose the stars were bright in heaven,
The sky was blue, and the cold Moon
Shone over the cold snow.
A speck in the air!
Is it his guide that approaches?
For it moves with the motion of life!
Lo! she returns and scatters from her pinions
Odours diviner than the gales of morning
Waft from Sabea.
Hovering before the youth she hung,
Till from her rosy feet that at his touch
Uncurled their grasp, he took
The fruitful bough they bore.
He took and tasted, a new life
Flowed thro' his renovated frame;
His limbs that late were sore and stiff
Felt all the freshness of repose,
His dizzy brain was calmed.
The heavy aching of his lids
At once was taken off,
For Laila from the Bowers of Paradise
Had borne the healing fruit.
So up the mountain steep
With untired foot he past,
The Green Bird guiding him
Mid crags, and ice, and rocks,
A difficult way, winding the long ascent.
How then the heart of Thalaba rejoiced
When bosomed in the mountain depths,
A sheltered Valley opened on his view!
It was the Simorg's vale,
The dwelling of the ancient Bird.
On a green and mossy bank.
Beside a rivulet
The Bird of Ages stood.
No sound intruded on his solitude,
Only the rivulet was heard
Whose everlasting flow
From the birth-day of the world had made
The same unvaried murmuring.
Here dwelt the all-knowing Bird
In deep tranquillity,
His eyelids ever closed
In full enjoyment of profound repose.
Reverently the youth approached
That old and only Bird,
And crossed his arms upon his breast,
And bowed his head and spake.
"Earliest of existing things,
"Earliest thou, and wisest thou,
"Guide me, guide me, on my way!
"I am bound to seek the caverns
"Underneath the roots of Ocean
"Where the Sorcerer brood are nurst.
"Thou the eldest, thou the wisest,
"Guide me, guide me, on my way!"
The ancient Simorg on the youth
Unclosed his thoughtful eyes,
And answered to his prayer.
"Northward by the stream proceed,
"In the fountain of the rock
"Wash away thy worldly stains,
"Kneel thou there, and seek the Lord
"And fortify thy soul with prayer.
"Thus prepared ascend the Sledge,
"Be bold, be wary, seek and find!
"God hath appointed all."
The ancient Simorg then let fall his lids
Returning to repose.
Northward along the rivulet
The adventurer went his way,
Tracing its waters upward to their source.
Thou hast not left the youth;...
With slow associate flight
She companies his way,
And now they reach the fountain of the rock.
There in the cold clear well
Thalaba washed away his earthly stains,
And bowed his face before the Lord,
And fortified his soul with prayer.
The while upon the rock
Stood the celestial Bird,
And pondering all the perils he must pass,
With a mild melancholy eye
Beheld the youth beloved.
And lo! beneath yon lonely pine, the sledge....
And there they stand the harnessed Dogs,
Their wide eyes watching for the youth,
Their ears erected turned towards his way.
They were lean as lean might be,
Their furrowed ribs rose prominent,
And they were black from head to foot,
Save a white line on every breast
Curved like the crescent moon.
And he is seated in the sledge,
His arms are folded on his breast,
The bird is on his knees;
There is fear in the eyes of the Dogs,
There is fear in their pitiful moan,
And now they turn their heads,
And seeing him there, Away!
The Youth with the start of their speed
Falls back to the bar of the sledge,
His hair floats straight in the stream of the wind
Like the weeds in the running brook.
They wind with speed the upward way,
An icey path thro' rocks of ice,
His eye is at the summit now,
And thus far all is dangerless,
And now upon the height
The black Dogs pause and pant,
They turn their eyes to Thalaba
As if to plead for pity,
They moan and moan with fear.
Once more away! and now
The long descent is seen,
A long, long, narrow path.
Ice-rocks aright and hills of snow,
Aleft the giddy precipice.
Be firm, be firm, O Thalaba!
One motion now, one bend,
And on the crags below
Thy shattered flesh will harden in the frost.
Why howl the Dogs so mournfully?
And wherefore does the blood flow fast
All purple o'er their sable hair?
His arms are folded on his breast,
Nor scourge nor goad has he,
No hand appears to strike,
No sounding lash is heard:
But piteously they moan and moan
And track their way with blood.
And lo! on yonder height
A giant Fiend aloft
Waits to thrust down the tottering Avalanche!
If Thalaba looks back he dies,
The motion of fear is death.
On ... on ... with swift and steady pace
Adown that dreadful way!
The youth is firm, the Dogs are fleet,
The Sledge goes rapidly,
The thunder of the avalanche
Re-echoes far behind.
On ... on ... with swift and steady pace
Adown that dreadful way!
The Dogs are fleet, the way is steep
The Sledge goes rapidly,
They reach the plain below.
A wide, wide plain, all desolate,
Nor tree, nor bush, nor herb!
On go the Dogs with rapid step,
The Sledge slides after rapidly,
And now the Sun went down.
They stopt and looked at Thalaba,
The Youth performed his prayer;
They knelt beside him as he prayed
They turned their heads to Mecca
And tears ran down their cheeks.
Then down they laid them in the snow
As close as they could lie,
They laid them down and slept.
And backward in the sledge
The Adventurer laid him down,
There peacefully slept Thalaba,
Lay in his bosom warm.
The Dogs awoke him at the dawn,
They knelt and wept again;
Then rapidly they journeyed on,
And still the plain was desolate,
Nor tree, nor bush, nor herb!
And ever at the hour of prayer
They stopt, and knelt, and wept;
And still that green and graceful Bird
Was as a friend to him by day,
And ever when at night he slept
Lay in his bosom warm.
In that most utter solitude
It cheered his heart to hear
Her soft and soothing voice;
Her voice was soft and sweet,
It swelled not with the blackbird's thrill,
Nor warbled rich like the dear bird, that holds
The solitary man
A loiterer in his thoughtful walk at eve;
But if no overflowing joy
Spake in its tones of tenderness
They soothed the softened soul.
Her bill was not the beak of blood;
There was a human meaning in her eye,
Its mild affection fixed on Thalaba
Woke wonder while he gazed
And made her dearer for the mystery.
Oh joy! the signs of life appear,
The first and single Fir
That on the limits of the living world
Strikes in the ice its roots.
Another, and another now;
And now the Larch that flings its arms
Down arching like the falling wave;
And now the Aspin's scattered leaves
Grey glitter on the moveless twig;
The Poplar's varying verdure now,
And now the Birch so beautiful,
Light as a Lady's plumes.
Oh joy! the signs of life! the Deer
Hath left his slot beside the way;
The little Ermine now is seen
White wanderer of the snow;
And now from yonder pines they hear
The clatter of the Grouse's wings:
And now the snowy Owl pursues
The Traveller's sledge in hope of food;
And hark! the rosy-breasted bird
The Throstle of sweet song!
Joy! joy! the winter-wilds are left!
Green bushes now and greener grass,
Red thickets here all berry-bright,
And here the lovely flowers!
When the last morning of their way arrived,
After the early prayer,
The Green Bird fixed on Thalaba
A sad and supplicating eye,
And with a human voice she spake,
"Servant of God, I leave thee now.
"If rightly I have guided thee,
"Give me the boon I beg!"
"O gentle Bird," quoth Thalaba,
"Guide and companion of my dangerous way,
"Friend and sole solace of my solitude,
"How can I pay thee benefits like these!
"Ask what thou wilt that I can give,
"O gentle Bird, the poor return
"Will leave me debtor still!"
"Son of Hodeirah!" she replied,
"When thou shalt see an Old Man crushed beneath
"The burthen of his earthly punishment,
"Forgive him, Thalaba!
"Yea, send a prayer to God on his behalf!"
A flush o'erspread the young Destroyer's cheek,
He turned his eye towards the Bird
As if in half repentance; for he thought
Of Okba; and his Father's dying groan
Came on his memory. The celestial Bird
Saw and renewed her speech.
"O Thalaba, if she who in thine arms
"Received the dagger-blow and died for thee,
"Deserve one kind remembrance ... save, O save
"The Father that she loved from endless death!"
"Laila! and is it thou?" the youth replied:
"What is there that I durst refuse to thee?
"This is no time to harbour in my heart
"One evil thought ... here I put off revenge,
"The last rebellious feeling ... be it so!
"God grant to me the pardon that I need
"As I do pardon him!
"But who am I that I should save
"The sinful soul alive?"
"Enough!" said Laila. "When the hour shall come
"Remember me! my task is done.
"We meet again in Paradise!"
She said and shook her wings, and up she soared
With arrow-swiftness thro' the heights of Heaven.
His aching eye pursued her path,
When starting onward went the Dogs,
More rapidly they hurried on
In hope of near repose.
It was the early morning yet
When by the well-head of a brook
They stopt, their journey done.
The spring was clear, the water deep,
A venturous man were he and rash
That should have probed its depths,
For all its loosened bed below
Heaved strangely up and down,
And to and fro, from side to side
It heaved, and waved, and tossed,
And yet the depths were clear,
And yet no ripple wrinkled o'er
The face of that fair Well.
And on that Well so strange and fair
A little boat there lay,
Without on oar, without a sail,
One only seat it had, one seat
As if for only Thalaba.
And at the helm a Damsel stood
A Damsel bright and bold of eye,
Yet did a maiden modesty
Adorn her fearless brow.
She seemed sorrowful, but sure
More beautiful for sorrow.
To her the Dogs looked wistful up,
And then their tongues were loosed,
"Have we done well, O Mistress dear!
"And shall our sufferings end?"
The gentle Damsel made reply,
"Poor Servants of the God I serve,
"When all this witchery is destroyed
"Your woes will end with mine.
"A hope, alas! how long unknown!
"This new adventurer gives:
"Now God forbid that he, like you,
"Should perish for his fears!
"Poor Servants of the God I serve
"Wait ye the event in peace."
A deep and total slumber as she spake
Seized them. Sleep on, poor sufferers! be at rest!
Ye wake no more to anguish. Ye have borne
The Chosen, the Destroyer! soon his hand
Shall strike the efficient blow,
Soon shaking off your penal forms shall ye
With songs of joy amid the Eden groves
Hymn the Deliverer's praise!
"The morn is young, the Sun is fair
"And pleasantly thro' pleasant banks
"The quiet brook flows on....
"Wilt thou embark with me?
"Thou knowest not the water's way,
"Think Stranger well! and night must come,...
"Wilt thou embark with me?
"Thro' fearful perils thou must pass,...
"Stranger, the oppressed ask thine aid!
"Thou wilt embark with me!"
She smiled in tears upon the youth,...
What heart were his who could gainsay
That melancholy smile?
"Sail on, sail on," quoth Thalaba,
"Sail on, in Allah's name!"
He sate him on the single seat,
The little boat moved on.
Thro' pleasant banks the quiet brook
Went winding pleasantly;
By fragrant fir groves now it past,
And now thro' alder-shores,
Thro' green and fertile meadows now
It silently ran by.
The flag-flower blossomed on its side,
The willow tresses waved,
The flowing current furrowed round
The water-lilly's floating leaf,
The fly of green and gauzy wing
Fell sporting down its course.
And grateful to the voyager
The freshness of the running stream,
The murmur round the prow.
The little boat falls rapidly
Adown the rapid brook.
But many a silent spring meantime,
And many a rivulet
Had swoln the growing brook,
And when the southern Sun began
To wind the downward way of heaven,
It ran a river deep and wide
Thro' banks that widened still.
Then once again the Damsel spake,
"The stream is strong, the river broad,
"Wilt thou go on with me?
"The day is fair but night must come....
"Wilt thou go on with me?
"Far far away the mourner's eye
"Is watching; for our little boat....
"Thou wilt go on with me!"
"Sail on, sail on," quoth Thalaba,
"Sail on, in Allah's name!"
The little boat falls rapidly
Adown the river-stream.
A broader and a broader stream.
That rocked the little boat!
The Cormorant stands upon its shoals,
His black and dripping wings
Half opened to the wind.
The Sun goes down, the crescent Moon
Is brightening in the firmament;
And what is yonder roar
That sinking now and swelling now,
But roaring, roaring still,
Still louder, louder, grows?
The little boat falls rapidly
Adown the rapid tide,
The Moon is bright above,
And the wide Ocean opens on their way!
Then did the Damsel speak again
"Wilt thou go on with me?
"The Moon is bright, the sea is calm
"And I know well the ocean-paths;...
"Wilt thou go on with me?
"Deliverer! yes! thou dost not fear!
"Thou wilt go on with me!"
"Sail on, sail on!" quoth Thalaba
"Sail on, in Allah's name!"
The Moon is bright, the sea is calm,
The little boat rides rapidly
Across the ocean waves;
The line of moonlight on the deep
Still follows as they voyage on;
The winds are motionless;
The gentle waters gently part
In murmurs round the prow.
He looks above, he looks around,
The boundless heaven, the boundless sea,
The crescent moon, the little boat,
Nought else above, below.
The Moon is sunk, a dusky grey
Spreads o'er the Eastern sky,
The Stars grow pale and paler;
Oh beautiful! the godlike Sun
Is rising o'er the sea!
Without an oar, without a sail
The little boat rides rapidly;...
Is that a cloud that skirts the sea?
There is no cloud in heaven!
And nearer now, and darker now....
For yonder are the rocks that rise
Dark in the reddening morn,
For loud around their hollow base
The surges rage and roar.
The little boat rides rapidly,
And now with shorter toss it heaves
Upon the heavier swell;
And now so near they see
The shelves and shadows of the cliff,
And the low-lurking rocks
O'er whose black summits hidden-half
The shivering billows burst.
And nearer now they feel the breaker's spray.
Then spake the Damsel, "yonder is our path
"Beneath the cavern arch.
"Now is the ebb, and till the ocean-flow
"We cannot over-ride the rocks.
"Go thou and on the shore
"Perform thy last ablutions, and with prayer
"Strengthen thy heart.... I too have need to pray."
She held the helm with steady hand
Amid the stronger waves,
Thro' surge and surf she drove,
The adventurer leapt to land.
Then Thalaba drew off Abdaldar's ring,
And cast it in the sea, and cried aloud,
"Thou art my shield, my trust, my hope, O God!
"Behold and guard me now,
"Thou who alone canst save.
"If from my childhood up, I have looked on
"With exultation to my destiny,
"If, in the hour of anguish, I have felt
"The justice of the hand that chastened me,
"If, of all selfish passions purified,
"I go to work thy will, and from the world
"Root up the ill-doing race,
"Lord! let not thou the weakness of my arm
"Make vain the enterprize!"
The Sun was rising all magnificent,
Ocean and Heaven rejoicing in his beams.
Performed his last ablutions, and he stood
And gazed upon the little boat
Riding the billows near,
Where, like a sea-bird breasting the broad waves,
It rose and fell upon the surge;
Till from the glitterance of the sunny main
He turned his aching eyes,
And then upon the beach he laid him down
And watched the rising tide.
He did not pray, he was not calm for prayer;
His spirit troubled with tumultuous hope
Toiled with futurity.
His brain, with busier workings, felt
The roar and raving of the restless sea,
The boundless waves that rose and rolled and rocked;
The everlasting sound
Opprest him, and the heaving infinite,
He closed his lids for rest.
Meantime with fuller reach and stronger swell
Wave after wave advanced;
Each following billow lifted the last foam
That trembled on the sand with rainbow hues;
The living flower, that, rooted to the rock,
Late from the thinner element
Shrunk down within its purple stem to sleep,
Now feels the water, and again
Awakening blossoms out
All its green anther-necks.
Was there a Spirit in the gale
That fluttered o'er his cheek?
For it came on him like the gentle sun
That plays and dallies o'er the night-closed flower,
And woos it to unfold anew to joy;
For it came on him as the dews of eve
Descend with healing and with life
Upon the summer mead;
Or liker the first sound of seraph song
And Angel hail, to him
Whose latest sense had shuddered at the groan
Of anguish, kneeling by his death bed-side.
He starts and gazes round to seek
The certain presence. "Thalaba!" exclaimed
"Father of my Oneiza!" he replied,
"And have thy years been numbered? art thou too
A second and a dearer voice repeats,
"Go in the favour of the Lord
"My husband. I have drest our bower of bliss.
"Go and perform the work,
"Let me not longer suffer hope in heaven!"
He turned an eager glance towards the sea,
"Come!" quoth the Damsel, and she drove
Her little boat to land.
Impatient thro' the rising wave
He rushed to meet its way,
His eye was bright, his cheek was flushed with joy.
"Hast thou had comfort in thy prayers?" she cried,
"Yea," answered Thalaba,
"A heavenly visitation." "God be praised!"
She uttered, "then I do not hope in vain!"
And her voice trembled, and her lips
Quivered, and tears ran down.
"Stranger," quoth she, "in years long past
"Was one who vowed himself
"The Champion of the Lord like thee
"Against the race of Hell.
"Young was he, as thyself,
"Gentle, and yet so brave!
"A lion-hearted man.
"Shame on me, Stranger! in the arms of love
"I held him from his calling, till the hour
"Was past, and then the Angel who should else
"Have crowned him with his glory-wreath,
"Smote him in anger ... years and years are gone....
"And in his place of penance he awaits
"Thee the Deliverer, surely thou art he!
"It was my righteous punishment
"In the same youth unchanged and changeless love,
"And fresh affliction and keen penitence
"To abide the written hour when I should waft
"The doomed Destroyer and Deliverer here.
"Remember thou that thy success involves
"No single fate, no common misery."
As thus she spake, the entrance of the cave
Darkened the boat below.
Around them from their nests,
The screaming sea-birds fled.
Wondering at that strange shape
Yet unalarmed at sight of living man,
Unknowing of his sway and power misused;
The clamours of their young
Echoed in shriller yells
That rung in wild discordance round the rock.
And farther as they now advanced
The dim reflection of the darkened day
Grew fainter, and the dash
Of the out-breakers deadened; farther yet
And yet more faint the gleam,
And there the waters at their utmost bound
Silently rippled on the rising rock.
They landed and advanced, and deeper in
Two adamantine doors
Closed up the cavern pass.
Reclining on the rock beside
Sate a grey-headed man
Watching an hour-glass by.
To him the Damsel spake,
"Is it the hour appointed?" the old man
Nor answered her awhile,
Nor lifted he his downward eye,
For now the glass ran low,
And like the days of age
With speed perceivable,
The latter sands descend:
And now the last are gone.
Then he looked up, and raised his arm, and smote
The adamantine gates.
The gates of adamant
Unfolding at the stroke
Opened and gave the entrance. Then She turned
To Thalaba and said
"Go in the name of God!
"I cannot enter,... I must wait the end
"In hope and agony.
"God and Mohammed prosper thee,
"For thy sake and for ours!"
He tarried not,... he past
The threshold, over which was no return.
All earthly thoughts, all human hopes
And passions now put off,
He cast no backward glance
Towards the gleam of day.
There was a light within,
A yellow light, as when the autumnal Sun
Through travelling rain and mist
Shines on the evening hills.
Whether from central fires effused,
Or if the sunbeams day by day,
From earliest generations, there absorbed,
Were gathering for the wrath-flame. Shade was
In those portentous vaults;
Crag overhanging, nor the column-rock
Cast its dark outline there.
For with the hot and heavy atmosphere
The light incorporate, permeating all,
Spread over all its equal yellowness.
There was no motion in the lifeless air,
He felt no stirring as he past
Adown the long descent,
He heard not his own footsteps on the rock
That thro' the thick stagnation sent no sound.
How sweet it were, he thought,
To feel the flowing wind!
With what a thirst of joy
He should breathe in the open gales of heaven!
Downward and downward still, and still the way,
The long, long, way is safe.
Is there no secret wile
No lurking enemy?
His watchful eye is on the wall of rock,...
And warily he marks the roof
And warily surveyed
The path that lay before.
Downward and downward still, and still the way,
The long, long, way is safe;
Rock only, the same light,
The same dead atmosphere,
And solitude, and silence like the grave.
At length the long descent
Ends on a precipice;
No feeble ray entered its dreadful gulphs,
For in the pit profound
Black Darkness, utter Night,
Repelled the hostile gleam,
And o'er the surface the light atmosphere
Floated and mingled not.
Above the depth four overawning wings,
Unplumed and huge and strong,
Bore up a little car;
Four living pinions, headless, bodyless,
Sprung from one stem that branched below
In four down-arching limbs,
And clenched the car-rings endlong and aside
With claws of griffin grasp.
But not on these, the depths so terrible,
The wonderous wings, fixed Thalaba his eye,
For there upon the brink,
With fiery fetters fastened to the rock,
A man, a living man, tormented lay,
The young Othatha; in the arms of love,
He who had lingered out the auspicious hour
Forgetful of his call.
In shuddering pity Thalaba exclaimed
"Servant of God, can I not succour thee?"
He groaned and answered, "Son of Man,
"I sinned and am tormented; I endure
"In patience and in hope.
"The hour that shall destroy the Race of Hell,
"That hour shall set me free."
"Is it not come?" quoth Thalaba,
"Yea! by this omen." And with fearless hand
He grasped the burning fetters, "in the name
"Of God!" and from the rock
Rooted the rivets, and adown the gulph
Hurled them. The rush of flames roared up,
For they had kindled in their fall
The deadly vapours of the pit profound,
And Thalaba bent on and looked below.
But vainly he explored
The deep abyss of flame
That sunk beyond the plunge of mortal eye,
Now all ablaze as if infernal fires
Illumed the world beneath.
Soon was the poison-fuel spent,
The flame grew pale and dim,
And dimmer now it fades and now is quenched,
And all again is dark,
Save where the yellow air
Enters a little in and mingles slow.
Meantime the freed Othatha clasped his knees
And cried, "Deliverer!" struggling then
With joyful hope, "and where is she," he cried,
"Whose promised coming for so many a year...."
"Go!" answered Thalaba,
"She waits thee at the gates."
"And in thy triumph," he replied,
"There thou wilt join us?" the Deliverer's eye
Glanced on the abyss, way else was none....
The depth was unascendable.
"Await not me," he cried,
"My path hath been appointed, go ... embark!
"Return to life,... live happy!"
That thro' the nations we may blazon it,
That we may bless thee.
Then Thalaba pronounced the name of God
And leapt into the car.
He neither breathes nor sees;
His eyes are closed for giddiness
His breath is sinking with the fall.
The air that yields beneath the car
Inflates the wings above.
And was the Simorgh with the Powers of ill
Associate to destroy?
And was that lovely mariner
A fiend as false as fair?
For still he sinks down ... down....
But ever the uprushing wind
Inflates the wings above,
And still the struggling wings
Repel the rushing wind.
Down ... down ... and now it strikes.
He stands and totters giddily,
All objects round, awhile,
Float dizzy on his sight.
Collected soon he gazes for the way.
There was a distant light that led his search;
The torch a broader blaze,
The unpruned taper flames a longer flame,
But this was fierce as is the noon-tide sun,
So in the glory of its rays intense
It quivered with green glow.
Beyond was all unseen,
No eye could penetrate
That unendurable excess of light.
It veiled no friendly form, thought Thalaba,
And wisely did he deem,
For at the threshold of the rocky door,
Hugest and fiercest of his kind accurst,
Fit warden of the sorcery gate
A rebel Afreet lay.
He scented the approach of human food
And hungry hope kindled his eye of flame.
Raising his hand to save the dazzled sense
Onward held Thalaba,
And lifted still at times a rapid glance.
Till, the due distance gained,
With head abased, he laid
The arrow in its rest.
With steady effort and knit forehead then,
Full on the painful light
He fixed his aching eye, and loosed the bow.
An anguish yell ensued,
And sure no human voice had scope or power
For that prodigious shriek
Whose pealing echoes thundered up the rock.
Dim grew the dying light,
But Thalaba leapt onward to the doors
Now visible beyond,
And while the Afreet warden of the way
Was writhing with his death-pangs, over him
Sprung and smote the stony doors,
And bade them in the name of God give way.
The dying Fiend beneath him at that name
Tossed in worse agony,
And the rocks shuddered, and the rocky doors
Rent at the voice asunder. Lo ... within....
The Teraph and the fire,
And Khawla, and in mail complete
Mohareb for the strife.
But Thalaba with numbing force
Smites his raised arm, and rushes by,
For now he sees the fire amid whose flames
On the white ashes of Hodeirah lies
Hodeirah's holy Sword.
He rushes to the fire,
Then Khawla met the youth
And leapt upon him, and with clinging arms
Clasps him, and calls Mohareb now to aim
The effectual vengeance. O fool! fool! he sees
His Father's Sword, and who shall bar his way?
Who stand against the fury of that arm
That spurns her to the earth?
She rises half, she twists around his knees,
A moment ... and he vainly strives
To shake her from her hold,
Impatient then into her cursed breast
He stamps his crushing heel,
And from her body, heaving now in death
Springs forward to the Sword.
The co-existent flame
Knew the Destroyer; it encircled him,
Rolled up his robe and gathered round his head,
Condensing to intenser splendour there,
His crown of glory and his light of life
Hovered the irradiate wreath.
The moment Thalaba had laid his hand
Upon his Father's Sword,
The Living Image in the inner cave
Smote the Round Altar. The Domdaniel rocked
Thro' all its thundering vaults;
Over the surface of the reeling Earth
The alarum shock was felt:
The Sorcerer brood, all, all, where'er dispersed,
Perforce obeyed the summons; all, they came
By Hell compelled to keep
Their baptism-covenant,
And with the union of their strength
Oppose the common danger; forced by Heaven
To share the common doom.
Vain are all spells! the Destroyer
Treads the Domdaniel floor.
They crowd with human arms and human force
To crush the single foe;
Vain is all human force!
He wields his Father's Sword,
The vengeance of awakened Deity!
But chief on Thalaba Mohareb prest,
The language of the inspired Witch
Announced one fatal blow for both,
And desperate of self-safety, yet he hoped
To serve the cause of Eblis, and uphold
His empire true in death.
Who shall withstand his way?
Scattered before the sword of Thalaba
The sorcerer throng recede
And leave him space for combat. Wretched man
What shall the helmet or the shield avail
Against Almighty anger! wretched man,
Too late Mohareb finds that he has chosen
The evil part! he rears his shield
To meet the Arabian's sword,...
Under the edge of that fire-hardened steel
The shield falls severed; his cold arm
Rings with the jarring blow,...
He lifts his scymetar,
A second stroke, and lo! the broken hilt
Hangs from his palsied hand!
And now he bleeds! and now he flies!
And fain would hide himself amid the throng,
But they feel the sword of Hodeirah,
But they also fly from the ruin!
And hasten to the inner cave,
And fall all fearfully
Around the Giant Idol's feet,
Seeking salvation from the Power they served.
Of magic hands of flesh and bones composed,
And human blood thro' veins and arteries
That flowed with vital action. In the shape
Of Eblis it was made,
Its stature such and such its strength
As when among the Sons of God
Pre-eminent, he raised his radiant head,
Prince of the Morning. On his brow
A coronet of meteor flames,
Flowing in points of light.
Self-poised in air before him,
Hung the Round Altar, rolling like the World
On its diurnal axis, like the World
Checquered with sea and shore,
The work of Demon art.
For where the sceptre in the Idol's hand
Touched the Round Altar, in its answering realm
Earth felt the stroke, and Ocean rose in storms,
And ruining Cities shaken from their seat
Crushed all their habitants.
His other arm was raised, and its spread palm
Up-bore the ocean-weight
Whose naked waters arched the sanctuary,
Sole prop and pillar he.
Fallen on the ground around his feet
The Sorcerers lay. Mohareb's quivering arms
Clung to the Idol's knees;
The Idol's face was pale
And calm in terror he beheld
The approach of the Destroyer.
Sure of his stroke, and therefore in pursuit
Following, nor blind, nor hasty on his foe,
Moved the Destroyer. Okba met his way,
Of all that brotherhood
He only fearless, miserable man,
The one that had no hope.
"On me, on me," the childless Sorcerer cried,
"Let fall the weapon! I am he who stole
"Upon the midnight of thy Father's tent,
"This is the hand that pierced Hodeirah's heart,
"That felt thy brethren's and thy sister's blood
"Gush round the dagger-hilt. Let fall on me
"The fated sword! the vengeance hour is come!
"Destroyer, do thy work!"
Nor wile, nor weapon, had the desperate wretch,
He spread his bosom to the stroke.
"Old man, I strike thee not!" said Thalaba,
"The evil thou hast done to me and mine
"Brought its own bitter punishment.
"For thy dear Daughter's sake I pardon thee,
"As I do hope Heaven's pardon. For her sake
"Repent while time is yet! thou hast my prayers
"To aid thee; thou poor sinner, cast thyself
"Upon the goodness of offended God!
"I speak in Laila's name, and what if now
"Thou canst not think to join in Paradise
"Her spotless Spirit,... hath not Allah made
"Al-Araf in his wisdom? where the sight
"Of Heaven shall kindle in the penitent
"The strong and purifying fire of hope,
"Till at the day of judgement he shall see
"The Mercy-Gates unfold."
The astonished man stood gazing as he spake,
At length his heart was softened, and the tears
Gushed, and he sobbed aloud.
Then suddenly was heard
The all-beholding Prophet's aweful voice,
"Thou hast done well, my Servant!
"Ask and receive thy reward!"
A deep and aweful joy
Seemed to distend the heart of Thalaba;
With arms in reverence crost upon his breast,
Upseeking eyes suffused with transport-tears
He answered to the Voice, "Prophet of God,
"Holy, and good, and bountiful!
"One only earthly wish have I, to work
"Thy will, and thy protection grants me that.
"Look on this Sorcerer! heavy are his crimes,
"But infinite is mercy! if thy servant
"Have now found favour in the sight of God,
"Let him be touched with penitence, and save
"His soul from utter death."
"The groans of penitence," replied the Voice
"Never arise unheard!
"But for thyself prefer the prayer,
"The Treasure-house of Heaven
"Is open to thy will."
"Prophet of God!" then answered Thalaba,
"I am alone on earth.
"Thou knowest the secret wishes of my heart!
"Do with me as thou wilt! thy will is best."
There issued forth no Voice to answer him,
But lo! Hodeirah's Spirit comes to see
His vengeance, and beside him, a pure form
Of roseate light, the Angel mother hangs.
"My Child, my dear, my glorious, blessed Child,
"My promise is performed ... fufil thy work!"
Thalaba knew that his death-hour was come,
And on he leapt, and springing up,
Into the Idol's heart
Hilt-deep he drove the Sword.
The Ocean-Vault fell in, and all were crushed.
In the same moment at the gate
Of Paradise, Oneiza's Houri-form
Welcomed her Husband to eternal bliss.
La mer n'est plus qu'un cercle aux yeux des Matelots,
Ou le Ciel forme un dome appuye sur les flots.
 The magnificent Mosque Tauris is faced with varnished bricks of
sumptuously builded and gilt."
A waste of ornament and labour characterises all the works of the
translation.
As soon as Kail arrived in the valley of Magaith, a part of the
 Al-Ahkaf signifies the Winding Sands.
_Pausanias, translated by Taylor._
 The Adites worshipped four Idols, Sakiah the dispenser of rain,
 Some of the Pagan Arabs when they died, had their Camel tied by
their sepulchre, and so left without meat or drink to perish, and
"She stared me in the face."
necessary to insert some of the preceding stanzas. The title is
_Old Poulter's mare._
At length old age came on her
And she grew faint and poor,
Her master he fell out with her
And turned her out of door,
Saying, if thou wilt not labour,
I prithee go thy way,--
And never let me see thy face
Until thy dying day.
These words she took unkind
And on her way she went,
For to fulfill her master's will
Always was her intent,
The hills were very high
The vallies very bare,
The summer it was hot and dry,--
It starved Old Poulter's Mare.
Old Poulter he grew sorrowful
And said to his kinsman Will,
I'd have thee go and seek the Mare
O'er valley and o'er hill,
Go, go, go, go, says Poulter,
And make haste back again,
For until thou hast found the Mare
In grief I shall remain.
Away went Will so willingly,
And all day long he sought:
Till when it grew towards the night,
He in his mind bethought,
He would go home and rest him
And come again to-morrow,
For if he could not find the Mare
His heart would break with sorrow.
He went a little farther
And turned his head aside,
And just by goodman Whitfield's gate
Oh there the Mare he spied.
He asked her how she did,
_She stared him in the face,
Then down she laid her head again,--
She was in wretched case._
 Concerning the Pyramids, "I shall put down, says Greaves, that
which is confessed by the Arabian writers to be the most probable
_Greaves's Pyramidographia._
certain _sigilla_ or _amuleta_, made under such and such
an aspect, or configuration of the stars and planets, with
several characters accordingly inscribed.
precious stone; and therefore in Abulfeda it is joined with
_yacut_, a ruby. I imagine it here to signify some magical
spell, which it may be was engraven on this stone.
 Adam, says a Moorish Author, after having eaten the forbidden
 A great number of stringy fibres seem to stretch out from the
 Shedad was the first King of the Adites. I have ornamented his
Las horrendas palabras parecian
salir por una trompa resontane,
y que los yertos labios no movian.
 The manner how the Teraphim were made is fondly conceited thus
_Godwyn's Moses and Aaron._
In _Rabbi Eleazar_ it is said to be the head of a child.
 The Devil, whom Mohammed names Eblis, from his dispair, was once
 These lines contain the various opinions of the Mohammedans
respecting the intermediate state of the Blessed, till the Day of
 Excepting in this line I have avoided all resemblances to the
powerful poetry of Lucan.
Aspicit astantem projecti corporis umbram,
Exanimes artus, invisaque claustra timentem
Carceris antiqui, pavet ire in pectus apertum,
Visceraque, et ruptas letali vulnere fibras.
Ah miser, extremum cui mortis munus iniquae
Eripitur, non posse mori! miratur Erichtho
Has fatis licuisse moras, irataque morti
Verberat immotum vivo serpente cadaver.
Protinus astrictus caluit cruor, atraque fovit
Vulnera, et in venas extremaque membra cucurrit.
Percussae gelido trepidant sub pectore fibrae;
Et nova desuetis subrepens vita medullis,
Miscetur morti, tunc omnis palpitat artus;
Tenduntur nervi; nec se tellure cadaver
Paulatim per membra levat, terraque repulsum est,
Erectumque simul. Distento lumina rictu
Nudantur. Nondum facies viventis in illo,
Jam morientis erat; remanet pallorque rigorque,
Et stupet illatus mundo.
Brebeuf was a man of genius. The Pharsalia is as well told in his
Physician of Pisaro, dedicated to Caesar Borgia._
 With the Arabs either a round skin is laid on the ground for a
 'Tis the custom of Persia to begin their feasts with fruits and
 The Tamarind is equally useful and agreable, it has a pulp of a
 l'aspect imprevu de tant de Castillans, D'etonnement, d'effroi,
 The Arabians divide their day into twenty four hours, and reckon
_Kinocetus_ is a stone not wholly useless--since it will cast out
 Giafar, the founder of the Barmecides, being obliged to fly from
self-destruction in case he had been taken by his enemies.
 In the country called Panten or Tathalamasin, "there be canes
 Matthew of Westminister says the history of the Old Woman of
The Turks report, as a certain truth, that the corps of Heyradin
_Morgan's History of Algiers._
_Hondtsdam_, that is to say, _a dog's sluce_; _Dam_ in Flemish
_Grimestone's Historie of the Netherlands_, 1608.
 The Vulture is very serviceable in Arabia, clearing the earth of
 The Arabs call the West and South West winds which prevail from
November to February, _the fathers of the rains._
 "We passed two of those vallies so common in Arabia, which when
 The simplicity, or, perhaps, more properly, the poverty, of the
If mine heart have been deceived by a woman, or if I
have laid wait at my neighbour's door.
Then let my wife grind unto another.
 The Mosques, which they pronounce Mesg jid, are built exactly in
_Russel's Aleppo._
felicity, is the ancient Keabe of Mecca, which according
to tradition, was taken up into heaven by the Angels at
the deluge, where it was placed perpendicularly over
the present sanctuary.
to be placed on the ninth, which is the higher of the
firmaments.
_Morgan's Hist. of Algiers._
_Morgan's Hist. of Algiers._
_Morgan's Hist. of Algiers._
deliveries."
_Sir W. Jones. Essay on the Poetry of the Eastern nations._
In Mr. Carlyle's translations from the Arabic, a Poet says of his
The silken thread on which they lie.
It seems the Arabs are still great rhymers, and their verses are
_Vanslebe.  Harris's Collection._
 His fingers, in beauty and slenderness appearing as the _Yed
This unnatural fashion is extended to animals.
Ali the Moor, to whose capricious cruelty Mungo Park was so long
 The blackened eye-lids and the reddened fingers were Eastern
 The Mimosa Selam produces splendid flowers of a beautiful red
colour with which the Arabians crown their heads on their days of
 The large locusts, which are near three inches long, are not the
_Niebuhr. Desc. de l'Arabie._
 An Arabian expression from the Moallakat. "She turns her right
side, as if she were in fear of some large-headed Screamer of the
 The Mussulmans are immutably prepossessed, that as the Earth
_Morgan's Hist. of Algiers._
 The story of Haruth and Maruth as in the Poem, may be found in
 The Ism-Ablah--The Science of the Name of God. They pretend that
There are some Mohammedans who shut themselves up in a dark place
 One of these _Hykes_ is usually six yards long and 5 or 6 foot
If thou at all take thy neighbour's raiment to pledge, thou shalt
 Fear the fire whose fuel is men, and stones prepared for the
unbelievers.
 The Arabians attribute to Solomon a perpetual enmity and warfare
Anchieta was going in a canoe to the mouth of the river Aldea, a
Hesperii peterent cum barbara littora mystae,
Et sociis aeger pluribus unus erat,
Ille suum extincto, Phoebi quia lampadis aestu
Occultoque uri, questus ab igne caput
Quaesiit in prora, si quam daiet angulus umbram,
Nulla sed in prorae partibus umbra fuit.
Quaesiit in puppi, nihil umbrae puppis habebat,
Summa sed urebant solis, & ima faces.
His cupiens Anchieta malis succurrere, solam
Aera per medium tendere vidit avem.
Vidit, ei socias, ait, i, quaere cohortes
Aliger atque redux cum legione veni.
Dicta probavit avis, celerique citatior Euro,
Cognatum properat, quaerere jussa gregem.
Milleque mox sociis comitata revertitur alis,
Mille sequi visae, mille praeire ducem.
Mille supra, & totidem, juxtaque, infraque volabant,
Omnis ad Anchietae turba vocata preces.
Et simul expansis facta testudine pennis,
Desuper in tostas incubuere rates.
Et procul inde diem, & lucem pepulere diei,
Debile dum molis conderet umbra caput.
Scilicet haec fierent, ut canopea repente
Anchieta artifices, esse coegit aves.
Father Simam de Vasconcellos probably stole this miracle from the
The most quaint account of Solomon's wisdom is in Du Bartas.
Whether the Heavens sweet-sweating kisse appear
To be Pearls parent, and the Oysters pheer,
And whether, dusk, it makes them dim withall,
Cleer breeds the cleer, and stormy brings the pale:
Whether from sea the amber-greece be sent,
Or be some fishes pleasant excrement.
He knowes why the Earth's immoveable and round,
The lees of Nature, center of the mound;
Hee knows her mesure: and hee knows beside
How _Coloquintida_ (duely apply'd)
Within the darknesse of the Conduit-pipes,
Amid the winding of our inward tripes,
Can so discreetly the _white humour_ take.
_Sylvester's Du Bartas._
servant.
_Morgan's Hist. of Algiers._
No creature seems so peculiarly fitted to the climate in which it
"I pushed on as fast as possible, in hopes of reaching some
approaching. Here then, thought I, after a short but ineffectual
struggle, terminate all my hopes of being useful in my day and
resolution, and determined to make another effort to prolong my
_Park's Travels in the Interior of Africa._
 All the time I was in Barbary I could never get sight of above
_Morgan's History of Algiers._
"The royal couriers in Persia wear a white sash girded from the
persuasion of this rivetted me as if to the spot where I stood.
_Smellie's Philosophy of Natural History._
The mosques, the minarets, and numerous cupolas form a splended
_Russel's Nat. Hist. of Aleppo._
appearance would immediately disperse them. Instead of this they
 Almanzor signifies the Victorious.
 The houses in Persia are not in the same place with their shops,
 On the other side of the river towards Arabia, over against the
drowned.
 At Bagdad are many cranes who build their nests upon the tops of
_Chandler's Travels in Asia Minor._
Whose large inclosure the rude hind, or guides
His plough, or binds his sheaves, while shepherds guard
Their flocks, secure of ill: on the broad top
Six chariots rattle in extended front.
Each side in length, in height, in solid bulk,
Reflects its opposite a perfect square;
Scarce sixty thousand paces can mete out
The vast circumference. An hundred gates
Of polished brass lead to that central point
Where thro' the midst, bridged o'er with wondrous art
Euphrates leads a navigable stream,
Branch'd from the current of his roaring flood.
_Roberts's Judah Restored._
Within the walls
Of Babylon was rais'd a lofty mound
Where flowers and aromatic shrubs adorn'd
The pensile garden. For Nebassar's queen,
Fatigued with Babylonia's level plains,
Sigh'd for her Median home, where nature's hand
Had scoop'd the vale, and cloath'd the mountain's side
With many a verdant wood; nor long she pin'd
Till that uxorious monarch called on art
To rival nature's sweet variety.
Forthwith two hundred thousand slaves uprear'd
This hill, egregious work; rich fruits o'er hang
The sloping walks and odorous shrubs entwine
Their undulating branches.
_Roberts's Judah Restored._
 Our early Travellers have given us strange and circumstantial
accounts of what they conceive to have been the Temple of Belus.
regularity; in some places it rises in points, is craggy and
appointed by God as places of punishment for Harut and Marut, two
_Pietro delle Valle. Universal Hist._
Eight towers arise,
Each above each, immeasurable height,
A monument at once of eastern pride
And slavish superstition. Round, a scale
Of circling steps entwines the conic pile;
And at the bottom on vast hinges grates
Four brazen gates, towards the four winds of heaven
Placed in the solid square.
_Roberts's Judah Restored._
 And Babylon the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees
excellency shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.
It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from
 The stupid superstition of the Turks with regard to hidden
treasures is well known, it is difficult or even dangerous for a
traveller to copy an inscription in sight of those barbarians.
Search for it; despair not:
Nay despair; do not search.
So of the ruines of ancient Tubuna.
 The Mussulmanns use, like the Roman Catholics, a rosary of beads
berries, coral, or glass beads.
 "The Mahummedans believe that the decreed events of every man's
 Zohak was the fifth King of the Pischdadian dynasty, lineally
 "I shall transcribe a foreign piece of Superstition, firmly
 No nation in the world is so much given to superstition as the
 In the Vision of Thurcillus Adam is described as beholding the
 The arabian horses are divided into two great branches; the
uncontaminated nobility.
Corpusanse[i] by the mariners.
whence our Hummums.
 In the place where the Whang-ho rises, there are more than an
_Gaubil. Astley's Collect. of Voy. and Travels._
 Among the mountains of the _Beni Abbess_, four leagues to the
 In 1568 the Persian Sultan gave the Grand Seigneur two most
 Major Scott informs us that scars and wounds by Persian writers
 "We pitched our tents among some little hills where there was a
 This was an expression of Ariosto in one of his smaller poems, I
 The Thracians say that the nightingales which build their nests
about the Sepulchre of Orpheus sing sweeter and louder than other
Gongora has addressed this Bird with somewhat more than his usual
Con diferencia tal, con gracia tanta
Aquel Ruisenor llora, que sospecho,
Que tiene otros cien mil dentro del pecho,
Que alternan su dolor por su garganta.
With such a grace that Nightingale bewails
That I suspect, so exquisite his note,
An hundred thousand other Nightingales
Within him, warble sorrow thro' his throat.
 Nuptials of Mohammed and Cadijah.--Dum autem ad nuptias
 Sclymus 2. received the Embassadors sitting upon a pallat which
 On the way from Macao to Canton in the rivers and channels there
They have no English glasse; of slices of a rocke
In pretie order like to panes, to serve their present need.
No other glasse, good faith, doth give a better light,
And sure the rock is nothing rich, the cost is very slight.
The Indians of Malabar use mother of pearl for window panes.
 The King and the great Lords have a sort of cellar for
 The Cuptzi, or King of Persia's merchant, treated us with a
collation, which was served in, in plate vermilion-gilt.
_Ambassador's Travels._
At Ispahan the King's horses were watered with silver pails thus
coloured.
 Mohammedes vinum appellabat _Matrem peccatorum_; cui sententiae
Hafez, Anacreon ille Persarum, minime ascribit suam; dicit autem
Illide ignem illum nobis liquidum,
Hoc est, ignem illum aquae similem affer.
 They export from Com earthen ware both white and varnished, and
 Casbin produces the fairest grape in Persia, which they call
 Dr. Fryer received a present from the Caun of Bunder-Abassae of
Apples candied in snow.
 Of the Indian dancing women who danced before the Ambassadors at
 At Seronge a sort of cloth is made so fine, that the skin may be
 I came to a Village called Cupri-Kent, or the Village of the
The most magnificent of these bridges is the Bridge of Zulpha at
singular assemblage which is _not void of beauty_.
 These lines are feebly adapted from a passage in Burnet's Theory
 The Zaccoum is a tree which issueth from the bottom of Hell: the
 When the sister of the famous Derar was made prisoner before
pallaces, and beautifull damosells, richly attired, and called it
circumstances more probable.
Travelling on further towards the south, I arrived at a certaine
 As the celestial Apostle, at his retreat from _Medina_, did not
This declaration must be the same for each of the five canonical
 In the Meidan, or Great Place of the city of Tauris, there are
En tede thapsai paida.]
Demoniack is said to have _his dwelling among the tombs_.
white-washed and beautified, they continue, to this day, to be an
_Chandler's Travels in Asia Minor._
insensible. From these signs they concluded him to be a notorious
In a certain town of _Hungary_, which is called in Latin _Oppida
seventeen persons of all ages and sexes died of Vampirism, some
incredulity, and strove to prove that there were such things as
Some Citizens, that were most zealous for the good of the public,
Notwithstanding these wise reflections, they remained in as much
 In these lines I have versified a passage in Bishop Taylor's
 My readers will recollect the Lenora. The unwilling resemblance
 How came Mohareb to be Sultan of this Island? Every one who has
read Don Quixote knows that there are always Islands to be had by
 In this valley, we found plenty of provender for our cattle:
 The hawk is used at Aleppo in taking the hare. "As soon as the
_Jackson's Journey over Land._
 I saw this appearance of death at a bull-fight--the detestable
A serpent which that aspidis
Is cleped, of his kinde hath this,
That he the stone noblest of all
The whiche that men carbuncle call,
Bereth in his head above on high.
For whiche whan that a man by slight
The stone to wynne, and him to dante,
With his carecte him wolde enchante,
Anone as he perceiveth that
He leyth downe his one ear all plat
Unto the ground, and halt it fast,
And eke that other eare als faste
He shoppeth with his taille so sore,
That he the wordes, lasse or more
Of his enchantement ne hereth.
And in this wise himself he skiereth,
So that he hath the wordes wayved,
And thus his eare is nought deceived.
 As for the wax it is the finest and whitest that may be had tho'
 It being notorious that fire enters into the composition of a
Devil, because he breathes smoke and flames, there is an obvious
propriety in supposing every Witch her own tinder-box, as they
approximate to diabolic nature. I am sorry that I have not the
The Moors interpreted one of these phosphoric miracles with equal
 A well known ceremony of witchcraft, old as classical
superstition, and probably not yet wholly disbelieved.
 A thicket of balm trees is said to have sprung up from the blood
_Treasury of ancient and modern Times._
 The common people of England have long been acquainted with this
_Chenier. additional chapt. by the Translator._
 The Mohammedan tradition is even more horrible than this: The
corpse of the wicked is gnawed and stung till the resurrection of
_Sale's preliminary discourse._
 The night Leileth-ul-cadr is considered as being particularly
 In Persia, when the King is in his _Megeler_, that is in his
 A Physician of Ragusa was deputed by that little Republic to
In this volume the pleadings of the Mother against the Ragusan
_Garcilasso's Royal Commentaries of Peru._
Hasta los hombros pende su cabello
Mas que el oro de Arabia roxo y bello.
Cada ano qual renuevo lo cortava
A damas se vendia para ornato.
Adown his shoulders his long tresses roll'd,
More beautiful and red than Eastern gold,
And annual as he cropt, the envied hair
Was yearly sold to ornament the fair.
The Cameleon, or Indian Salamander, otherwise called Gekko.
 When any person is to be buried, it is usual to bring the corpse
Neque harum, quas colis, arborum,
Te, praeter invisas cupressus,
Ulla brevem dominum sequetur.
 The Turks bury not at all within the walls of the city, but the
 A strange account of the Cedars of Lebanon is given by De la
tribusque & ultra, mensibus mordaciter dominatur. Cedri in altum
 It is well known how much the Orientalists are addicted to this
"Sephie-Mirza was born in the year of the _Egire_ 1057. For the
 We have now to refute their errour who are persuaded that Brazen
 This Table is suspended in the Seventh Heaven, and guarded from
 They celebrate the night Leileth-ul-beraeth on the 15th of the
 The Balance of the Dead is an article in almost every creed.
"For take thy Ballaunce, if thou be so wise,
"And weigh the winde that under heaven doth blow;
"Or weigh the light that in the East doth rise:
"Or weigh the thought that from man's mind doth flow
"But if the weight of these thou canst not show,
"Weigh but one word which from thy lips doth fall."
 This double meaning is in the spirit of oracular prediction. The
 The Souls of the Blessed are supposed by some of the Mohammedans
To this there is an allusion in the Moallakat. "Then I knew with
_My beating Bosom is a well-wrought cage,
Whence that sweet Gold-finch Hope shall ne'er elope!_
 When Hosein the son of Ali was sick of a grievous disorder, he
Maracci after detailing and ridiculing the Mohammedan miracles,
These, says Maracci, are _miracula perseverantia_, permanent
 In the Bahar-Danush the Simorg is mentioned as a genus--not an
The Simorg is a monstrous Bird like a Griffin; in _the History of
 Araf is a place between the Paradise and the Hell of the
Engravings, price 10s. 6d. in Boards.
In a few Days will be published,
POEMS, partly in the Scottish Dialect; by _Hector Macneill, Esq._