His breath is the soul of flowers like these, Is making the stream around them tremble! Hail to thee, hail to thee, kindling power! Thy holiest time is the moonlight hour, And there never was moonlight so sweet as this. By the fair and brave, Who blushing unite, Like the sun and wave, When they meet at night! By the tear that shows When passion is nigh, As the rain-drop flows From the heat of the sky; By the first love-beat Of the youthful heart, The blue lotos, which grows in Cashmere and in Persia. By the bliss to meet, By all that thou hast Which-oh! could it last, This earth were heaven ! We call thee hither, entrancing Power! Thy holiest time is the moonlight hour, And there never was moonlight so sweet as this. Impatient of a scene, whose luxuries stole, Spite of himself, too deep into his soul, And where, midst all that the young heart loves most, } But here again new spells came o'er his sense: Could call up into life, of soft and fair, Of fond and passionate, was glowing there; Whose orb when half-retir'd looks loveliest ! There hung the history of the Genii-King, Here fond ZULEIKA 6 woos with open arms The Hebrew boy, who flies from her young charms, Yet, flying, turns to gaze, and, half undone, Wishes that Heav'n and she could both be won! 5 For the loves of King Solomon (who was supposed to preside over the whole race of Genii), with Balkis, the queen of Sheba or Saba, see D'Herbelot, and the Notes on the Koran, chap. 2. 6 The wife of Potiphar, thus named by the Orientals. Her adventure with the patriarch Joseph is the subject of many of their poems and romances. And here MOHAMMED, born for love and guile, With rapid step, yet pleas'd and lingering eye, Here paus'd he, while the music, now less near, As though the distance, and that heavenly ray Oh! could he listen to such sounds unmov'd, 7 The particulars of Mahomet's amour with Mary, the Coptic girl, in justification of which he added a new chapter to the Koran, may be found in Gagnier's Notes upon Abulfeda, p. 151. Clasp yet awhile her image to thy heart, Ere all the light, that made it dear, depart. Think of her smiles as when thou saw'st them last, The song is hush'd, the laughing nymphs are flown, And he is left, musing of bliss, alone; — Alone? no, not alone - that heavy sigh, That sob of grief, which broke from some one nigh |