Oh! 'twas a sight-that Heav'n—that child A scene, which might have well beguil'd For glories lost and peace gone by! And how felt he, the wretched Man Nor brought him back one branch of grace. And hope, and feeling, which had slept From boyhood's hour, that instant came Fresh o'er him, and he wept- he wept! Blest tears of soul-felt penitence ! In whose benign, redeeming flow Is felt the first, the only sense Of guiltless joy that guilt can know. "There's a drop," said the PERI, "that down from the moon "Falls through the withering airs of June 66 Upon EGYPT's land*, of so healing a power, "So balmy a virtue, that ev'n in the hour "That drop descends, contagion dies, "And health re-animates earth and skies! "Oh, is it not thus, thou man of sin, "The precious tears of repentance fall? "Though foul thy fiery plagues within, "One heavenly drop hath dispell'd them all!" And now-behold him kneeling there And hymns of joy proclaim through Heaven 'Twas when the golden orb had set, While on their knees they linger'd yet, *The Nucta, or Miraculous Drop, which falls in Egypt precisely on St. John's day, in June, and is supposed to have the effect of stopping the plague. There fell a light more lovely far To mortal eye this light might seem "Joy, joy for ever! my task is done “To thee, sweet Eden! how dark and sad "Are the diamond turrets of SHADUKIAM*, "And the fragrant bowers of AMBERABAD! "Farewell, ye odours of Earth, that die "Passing away like a lover's sigh ; * The Country of Delight—the name of a province in the kingdom of Jinnistan, or Fairy Land, the capital of which is called the City of Jewels. Amberabad is another of the cities of Jinnistan. 'My feast is now of the Tooba Tree*, "Whose scent is the breath of Eternity! "Farewell, ye vanishing flowers, that shone "In my fairy wreath, so bright and brief;"Oh! what are the brightest that e'er have blown, "To the lote-tree, springing by ALLA's thronet, 66 "Whose flowers have a soul in every leaf. Joy, joy for ever!—my task is done "The Gates are pass'd, and Heav'n is won!" * The tree Tooba, that stands in Paradise, in the palace of Mahomet. See Sale's Prelim. Disc. - Tooba, says D'Herbelot, signifies beatitude, or eternal happiness. † Mahomet is described, in the 53d chapter of the Koran, as having seen the angel Gabriel "by the lote-tree, beyond which there is no passing: near it is the Garden of Eternal Abode." This tree, says the commentators, stands in the seventh Heaven, on the right hand of the Throne of God. "AND this," said the Great Chamberlain, "is poetry! this flimsy manufacture of the brain, which, in comparison with the lofty and durable monuments of genius, is as the gold filigreework of Zamara beside the eternal architecture of Egypt!" After this gorgeous sentence, which, with a few more of the same kind, FADLADEEN kept by him for rare and important occasions, he proceeded to the anatomy of the short poem just recited. The lax and easy kind of metre in which it was written ought to be denounced, he said, as one of the leading causes of the alarming growth of poetry in our times. If some check were not given to this lawless facility, we should soon be over-run by a race of bards as numerous and as shallow as the hundred and twenty thousand Streams of Basra. They who succeeded in this style "It is said that the rivers or streams of Basra were reckoned in the time of Pelal ben Abi Bordeh, and amounted to the number of one hundred and twenty thousand streams." - Ebn Haukal. |