The crescent glimmers on the hill,

The mosque's high lamps are quivering still:
Though too remote for sound to wake
In echoes of the far tophaike,

.

The flashes of each joyous peal
Are seen to prove the Moslems' zeal.
To-night, set Rhamazani's sun :
To-night, the Bairam's feast 's begun ;
To-night-but who and what art thou,
Of foreign garb and fearful brow?
And what are these to thine or thee,
That thou shouldst either pause or flee?
He stood some dread was on his face,
Soon hatred settled in its place :
It rose not with the reddening flush
Of transient anger's darkening blush,
But pale as marble o'er the tomb,
Whose ghastly whiteness aids its gloom.
His brow was bent, his eye was glazed,
He raised his arm, and fiercely raised,
And sternly shook his hand on high,
As doubting to return or fly:

Impatient of his flight delay'd,

Here loud his raven charger neigh'd—

Down glanced that hand, and grasp'd his blade;
That sound had burst his waking dream
As slumb'rer starts at owlet's scream.
The spur hath lanced his courser's sides;
Away, away! for life he rides;
Swift as the hurl'd on high jerreed, 9
Springs to the touch his startled steed;
The rock is doubled, and the shore

Shakes with the clattering tramp no more;
The crag is won, no more

seen

His christian crest and haughty mien.
'T was but an instant he restrain'd
That fiery barb so sternly rein'd:
'T was but a moment that he stood,
Then sped as if by death pursued;
But in that instant o'er his soul
Winters of memory seem'd to roll,
And gather in that drop of time
A life of pain, an age of crime.
O'er him who loves, or hates, or fears,
Such moment pours the grief of
What felt he then, at once opprest
By all that most distracts the breast?
That pause, which ponder'd o'er his fate,

years:

Oh, who its dreary length shall date'

Though in time's record nearly nought,
It was eternity to thought!

For infinite as boundless

space

The thought that conscience must embrace,
Which in itself can comprehend

Woe without name, or hope, or end.

The hour is past, the Giaour is gone;
And did he fly or fall alone?
Woe to that hour he came or went!
The curse for Hassan's sin was sent,
To turn a palace to a tomb :
He came, he went, like the simoom,1
That harbinger of fate and gloom,
Beneath whose widely-wasting breath
The very cypress droops to death—
Dark tree, still sad when others' grief is fled,
The only constant mourner o'er the dead!

The steed is vanish'd from the stall;
No serf is seen in Hassan's hall;
The lonely spider's thin grey pall
Waves slowly widening o'er the wall;
The bat builds in his haram bower;
And in the fortress of his power
The owl usurps the beacon-tower;

10

OTHECA

BIB

The wild-dog howls o'er the fountain's brim,
With baffled thirst, and famine grim;

For the stream has shrunk from its marble bed,
Where the weeds and the desolate dust are spread.

'T was sweet of yore to see it play

And chase the sultriness of day,
As, springing high, the silver dew
In whirls fantastically flew,

And flung luxurious coolness round

The air, and verdure o'er the ground.

'T was sweet, when cloudless stars were bright,

To view the wave of watery light,

And hear its melody by night.

And oft had Hassan's childhood play'd

Around the verge of that cascade ;

And oft upon his mother's breast
That sound had harmonized his rest;
And oft had Hassan's youth along
Its bank been soothed by beauty's song;
And softer seem'd each melting tone
Of music mingled with its own.
But ne'er shall Hassan's age repose
Along the brink at twilight's close:

N

BO

DLE

The stream that fill'd that font is fled-
The blood that warm'd his heart is shed!
And here no more shall human voice
Be heard to rage, regret, rejoice;
The last sad note that swell'd the gale
Was woman's wildest funeral wail:
That quenched in silence, all is still,

But the lattice that flaps when the wind is shrill :
Though raves the gust, and floods the rain,

No hand shall close its clasp again.
On desert sands 't were joy to scan
The rudest steps of fellow man-
So here the very voice of grief
Might wake an echo like relief;
At least 't would say, "all are not gone;
There lingers life, though but in one-
For many a gilded chamber's there,
Which solitude might well forbear!
Within that dome as yet decay

Hath slowly work'd her cankering way.—
But gloom is gather'd o'er the gate,
Nor there the fakir's self will wait;
Nor there will wandering dervise stay,
For bounty cheers not his delay;
Nor there will weary stranger halt
To bless the sacred" bread and salt." 11
Alike must wealth and poverty
Pass heedless and unheeded by,
For courtesy and pity died

With Hassan on the mountain side;

His roof, that refuge unto men,

Is desolation's hungry den.

The guest flies the hall, and the vassal from labour, Since his turban was cleft by the infidel's sabre!"

*

I hear the sound of coming feet,
But not a voice mine ear to greet;
More near-each turban I can scan,
And silver-sheathed ataghan. 13
The foremost of the band is seen,
An emir by his garb of green :

:14

"Ho! who art thou?"-this low salam15 Replies of Moslem faith I am.

The burthen ye so gently bear,

Seems one that claims your utmost care,
And, doubtless, holds some precious freight,
My humble bark would gladly wait."

"Thou speakest sooth; thy skiff unmoor, And waft us from the silent shore: Nay, leave the sail still furl'd, and ply The nearest oar that 's scatter'd by ; And midway to those rocks where sleep The channel'd waters dark and deep, Rest from your task-so-bravely done; Our course has been right swiftly run; Yet 't is the longest voyage, I trow,

That one of

*

Sullen it plunged, and slowly sank; The calm wave rippled to the bank. I watch'd it as it sank; methought Some motion from the current caught Bestirr'd it more,-'t was but the beam That chequer'd o'er the living stream: I gazed till, vanishing from view, Like' lessening pebble it withdrew, Still less and less, a speck of white That gemm'd the tide, then mock'd the sight; And all its hidden secrets sleep,

Known but to genii of the deep,

Which, trembling in their coral caves,

They dare not whisper to the waves.

As rising on its purple wing
The insect-queen16 of eastern spring,
O'er emerald meadows of Kashmeer
Invites the young pursuer near,
And leads him on from flower to flower
A weary chase and wasted hour,
Then leaves him, as it soars on high,
With panting heart and tearful eye :
So beauty lures the full-grown child,
With hue as bright, and wing as wild;
A chase of idle hopes and fears,
Begun in folly, closed in tears.
If won, to equal ills betray'd,
Woe waits the insect and the maid;
A life of pain, the loss of peace,
From infant's play, and man's caprice:
The lovely toy so fiercely sought
Hath lost its charm by being caught;
For every touch that wooed its stay
Hath brush'd its brightest hues away,

Till, charm, and hue, and beauty gone,
'T is left to fly or fall alone.

With wounded wing, or bleeding breast,
Ah! where shall either victim rest?
Can this with faded pinion soar
From rose to tulip as before?
Or beauty, blighted in an hour,
Find joy within her broken bower?
No: gayer insects fluttering by

Ne'er droop the wing o'er those that die ;

And lovelier things have
mercy shown
To every failing but their own,
And every woe a tear can claim,
Except an erring sister's shame.

The mind that broods o'er guilty woes,
Is like the scorpion girt by fire;
In circle narrowing as it glows,
The flames around their captive close,
Till, inly search'd by thousand throes,
And maddening in her ire,

One sad and sole relief she knows:
The sting she nourish'd for her foes,
Whose venom never yet was vain,
Gives but one pang, and cures all pain,
And darts into her desperate brain :
So do the dark in soul expire,
Or live like scorpion girt by fire; '7
So writhes the mind remorse hath riven,
Unfit for earth, undoom'd for heaven,
Darkness above, despair beneath,
Around it flame, within it death!

Black Hassan from the haram flies,
Nor bends on woman's form his eyes;
The unwonted chase each hour employs,
Yet shares he not the hunter's joys.
Not thus was Hassan wont to fly
When Leila dwelt in his serai.
Doth Leila there no longer dwell?
That tale can only Hassan tell;
Strange rumours in our city say
Upon that eve she fled away,

When Rhamazan's 18 last sun was set,
And, flashing from each minaret,
Millions of lamps proclaim'd the feast
Of Bairam through the boundless East.