Then shall the reign of mind commence on earth,
And, starting fresh as from a second birth,
Man, in the sunshine of the world's new spring,
Shall walk transparent, like some holy thing!
Then too your Prophet from his angel brow
Shall cast the Veil that hides its splendours now,
And gladdened Earth shall, through her wide expanse,
Bask in the glories of this countenance !
"For thee, young warrior, welcome !-thou hast yet
Some tasks to learn, some frailties to forget,
Ere the white war-plume o'er thy brow can wave ;—
But, once my own, mine all till in the grave!"
The pomp is at an end-the crowds are gone-Each ear and heart still haunted by the tone Of that deep voice, which thrilled like Allah's own! The Young all dazzled by the plumes and lances, The glittering throne, and Haram's half-caught glances; The Old deep pondering on the promised reign Of peace and truth and all the female train Ready to risk their eyes, could they but gaze A moment on that brow's miraculous blaze!
But there was one, among the chosen maids,
Who blushed behind the gallery's silken shades,
One to whose soul the pageant of to-day
Has been like death :-you saw her pale dismay,
Ye wondering sisterhood, and heard the burst
Of exclamation from her lips, when first
She saw that youth, too well, too dearly known,
Silently kneeling at the Prophet's throne.
Ah Zelica! there was a time when bliss
Shone o'er thy heart from every look of his ;
When but to see him, hear him, breathe the air
In which he dwelt, was thy soul's fondest prayer ;
When round him hung such a perpetual spell,
Whate'er he did, none ever did so well.
Too happy days! when, if he touched a flower
Or gem of thine, 'twas sacred from that hour;
When thou didst study him till every tone
And gesture and dear look became thy own,-
Thy voice like his, the changes of his face
In thine reflected with still lovelier grace,
Like echo, sending back sweet music, fraught
With twice the aërial sweetness it had brought!
Yet now he comes,-brighter than even he
E'er beamed before, but, ah! not bright for thee;
No-dread, unlooked for, like a visitant
From the other world, he comes as if to haunt
Thy guilty soul with dreams of lost delight,
Long lost to all but memory's aching sight:-
Sad dreams! as when the Spirit of our Youth
Returns in sleep, sparkling with all the truth
And innocence once ours, and leads us back,
In mournful mockery, o'er the shining track
Of our young life, and points out every ray
Of hope and peace we 've lost upon the way!
Once happy pair !--In proud Bokhara's groves,
Who had not heard of their first youthful loves?
Born by that ancient flood* which from its spring
In the dark Mountains swiftly wandering,
Enriched by every pilgrim brook that shines
With relics from Buchara's ruby mines,
And lending to the Caspian half its strength,
In the cold Lake of Eagles sinks at length;-
There, on the banks of that bright river born,
The flowers that hung above its wave at morn
Blessed not the waters, as they murmured by
With holier scent and lustre than the sigh
And virgin-glance of first affection cast
Upon their youth's smooth current, as it passed!
But war disturbed this vision,-far away
From her fond eyes summoned to join the array
Of Persia's warriors on the hills of Thrace,
The youth exchanged his sylvan dwelling-place
For the rude tent and war-field's deathful clash;
His Zelica's sweet glances for the flash
Of Grecian wild-fire, and Love's gentle chains
For bleeding bondage on Byzantium's plains.
Month after month, in widowhood of soul
Drooping, the maiden saw two summers roll
Their suns away-but ah how cold and dim
Even summer suns, when not beheld with him!
From time to time ill-omened rumours came,
Like spirit-tongues, muttering the sick man's name
Just ere he dies :-at length those sounds of dread
Fell withering on her soul, "Azim is dead!"
Oh grief, beyond all other griefs, when fate
First leaves the young heart lone and desolate
In the wide world, without that only tie
For which it loved to live or feared to die ;-
Lorr. as the hung-up lute, that ne'er hath spoken
Since the sad day its master-chord was broken!
Fond maid, the sorrow of her soul was such,
Even reason sunk,—blighted beneath its touch;
And though, ere long, her sanguine spirit rose
Above the first dead pressure of its woes,
Though health and bloom returned, the delicate chain
Of thought, once tangled, never cleared again.
*The Amoo, which rises in the Belur Tag or Dark Mountains, and running nearly from east to west, splits into two branches; one of which falls into the Caspian sea, and the other into Aral Nahr. or the Lake of Eagles.
Warm, lively, soft as in youth's happiest day,
The mind was still all there, but turned astray;
A wandering bark, upon whose pathway shone
All stars of heaven, except the guiding one!
Again she smiled, nay, much and brightly smiled,
But 'twas a lustre strange, unreal, wild;
And when she sung to her lute's touching strain,
'Twas like the notes, half ecstasy, half pain,
The bulbul* utters, ere her soul depart,
When, vanquished by some minstrel's powerful art,
She dies upon the lute whose sweetness broke her heart.
Such was the mood in which that mission found
Young Zelica,-that mission which around
The Eastern world, in every region blest
With woman's smile, sought out its loveliest,
Το grace that galaxy of lips and eyes
Which the Veiled Prophet destined for the skies:-
And such quick welcome as a spark receives
Dropped on a bed of Autumn's withered leaves,
Did every tale of these enthusiasts find
In the wild maiden's sorrow-blighted mind.
All fire, at once the maddening zeal she caught ;-
Elect of Paradise! blest, rapturous thought
Predestined bride, in heaven's eternal dome,
Of some brave youth-ha! durst they say "of some?"
No-of the one, one only object traced
In her heart's core too deep to be effaced;
The one whose memory, fresh as life, is twined
With every broken link of her lost mind;
Whose image lives, though Reason's self be wrecked, Safe 'mid the ruins of her intellect !
Alas, poor Zelica! it needed all
The fantasy which held thy mind in thrall
To see in that gay Haram's glowing maids
A sainted colony for Eden's shades;
Or dream that he of whose unholy flame
Thou wert too soon the victim shining came
From Paradise, to people its pure sphere
With souls like thine, which he hath ruined here!
No-had not reason's light totally set,
And left thee dark, thou hadst an amulet
In the loved image, graven on thy heart,
Which would have saved thee from the tempter's art,
And kept alive, in all its bloom of breath,
That purity whose fading is love's death!—
But lost, inflamed,-a restless zeal took place
Of the mild virgin's still and feminine grace;
First of the Prophet's favourites, proudly first
In zeal and charms,-too well the Impostor nursed
Her soul's delirium, in whose active flame,
Thus lighting up a young luxuriant frame,
He saw more potent sorceries to bind
To his dark yoke the spirits of mankind,
More subtle chains than hell itself e'er twined.
No art was spared, no witchery ;—all the skill.
His demons taught him was employed to fill
Her mind with gloom and ecstasy by turns-
That gloom through which Frenzy but fiercer burns,
That ecstasy which from the depth of sadness
Glares like the maniac's moon, whose light is madness!
'Twas from a brilliant banquet, where the sound Of poesy and music breathed around,
Together picturing to her mind and ear
The glories of that heaven, her destined sphere,
Where all was pure, where every stain that lay
Upon the spirit's light should pass away,
And, realising more than youthful love
E'er wished or dreamed, she should for ever rove
Through fields of fragrance by her Azim s side,
His own blessed, purified, eternal bride !—
'Twas from a scene, a witching trance like this,
He hurried her away, yet breathing bliss,
To the dim charnel-house-through all its steams
Of damp and death, led only by those gleams
Which foul Corruption lights, as with design
To show the gay and proud she too can shine-
And, passing on through upright ranks of Dead,
Which to the maiden, doubly crazed by dread,
Seemed, through the blueish death-light round them cast,
To move their lips in mutterings as she passed-
There, in that awful place, when each had quaffed
And pledged in silence such a fearful draught,
Such-oh! the look and taste of that red bowl
Will haunt her till she dies-he bound her soul
By a dark oath, in hell's own language framed,
Never, while earth his mystic presence claimed,
While the blue arch of day hung o'er them both,
Never, by that all-imprecating oath,
In joy or sorrow from his side to sever.
She swore, and the wide charnel echoed, "Never, never!"
From that dread hour, entirely, wildly given
To him and she believed, lost maid !-to heaven,
Her brain, her heart, her passions all inflamed,
How proud she stood, when in full Haram named
The Priestess of the Faith!-how flashed her eyes
With light, alas! that was not of the skies,
When round, in trances only less than hers,
She saw the Haram kneel, her prostrate worshippers.
Well might Mokanna think that form alone
Had spells enough to make the world his own :-
Light, lovely limbs, to which the spirit's play
Gave motion, airy as the dancing spray
When from its stem the small bird wings away:
Lips in whose rosy labyrinth, when she smiled,
The soul was lost; and blushes, swift and wild
As are the momentary meteors sent
Across the uncalm but beauteous firmament.
And then her look-oh! where's the heart so wise
Could unbewildered meet those matchless eyes?
Quick, restless, strange, but exquisite withal,
Like those of angels just before their fall;
Now shadowed with the shames of earth-now crost
By glimpses of the Heaven her heart had lost;
In every glance there broke, without controul,
The flashes of a bright but troubled soul,
Where sensibility still wildly played,
Like lightning, round the ruins it had made!
And such was now young Zelica-so changed
From her who, some years since, delighted ranged
The almond groves that shade Bokhara's tide,
All life and bliss, with Azim by her side!
So altered was she now, this festal day,
When, 'mid the proud Divan's dazzling array,
The vision of that Youth whom she had loved,
Had wept as dead, before her breathed and moved ;-
When-bright, she thought, as if from Eden's track
But half-way trodden, he had wandered back
Again to earth, glistening with Eden's light-
Her beauteous Azim shone before her sight.
O Reason! who shall say what spells renew,
When least we look for it, thy broken clue!
Through what small vistas o'er the darkened brain
Thy intellectual day-beam bursts again;
And how, like forts to which beleaguerers win
Unhoped-for entrance through some friend within,
One clear idea, wakened in the breast
By memory's magic, lets in all the rest.
Would it were thus, unhappy girl, with thee!
But though light came, it came but partially;
Enough to show the maze in which thy sense
Wandered about,—but not to guide it thence;
Enough to glimmer o'er the yawning wave,
But not to point the harbour which might save.
Hours of delight and peace, long left behind,
With that dear form came rushing o'er her mind ;
But, oh! to think how deep her soul had gone
In shame and falsehood since those moments shone;
And, then, her oath-there madness lay again,
And, shuddering, back she sunk into her chain
Of mental darkness, as if blest to flee
From light, whose every glimpse was agony !
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