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From “The Fire-Worshippers”
FAREWELL,—farewell to thee, Araby’s daughter! | |
| (Thus warbled a Peri beneath the dark sea;) | |
| No pearl ever lay under Oman’s green water | |
| More pure in its shell than thy spirit in thee. | |
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| O, fair as the sea-flower close to thee growing, | 5 |
| How light was thy heart till love’s witchery came, | |
| Like the wind of the south o’er a summer lute blowing, | |
| And hushed all its music and withered its frame! | |
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| But long, upon Araby’s green sunny highlands, | |
| Shall maids and their lovers remember the doom | 10 |
| Of her who lies sleeping among the Pearl Islands, | |
| With naught but the sea-star to light up her tomb. | |
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| And still, when the merry date-season is burning, | |
| And calls to the palm-grove the young and the old, | |
| The happiest there, from their pastime returning | 15 |
| At sunset, will weep when thy story is told. | |
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| The young village maid, when with flowers she dresses | |
| Her dark flowing-hair for some festival day, | |
| Will think of thy fate till, neglecting her tresses, | |
| She mournfully turns from the mirror away. | 20 |
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| Nor shall Iran, beloved of her hero, forget thee— | |
| Though tyrants watch over her tears as they start, | |
| Close, close by the side of that hero she ’ll set thee, | |
| Embalmed in the innermost shrine of her heart. | |
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| Farewell!—be it ours to embellish thy pillow | 25 |
| With everything beauteous that grows in the deep; | |
| Each flower of the rock and each gem of the billow | |
| Shall sweeten thy bed and illumine thy sleep. | |
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| Around thee shall glisten the loveliest amber | |
| That ever the sorrowing sea-bird has wept; | 30 |
| With many a shell, in whose hollow-wreathed chamber, | |
| We, Peris of ocean, by moonlight have slept. | |
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| We ’ll dive where the gardens of coral lie darkling, | |
| And plant all the rosiest stems at thy head; | |
| We ’ll seek where the sands of the Caspian are sparkling, | 35 |
| And gather their gold to strew over thy bed. | |
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| Farewell!—farewell!—until pity’s sweet fountain | |
| Is lost in the hearts of the fair and the brave, | |
| They ’ll weep for the Chieftain who died on that mountain, | |
| They ’ll weep for the Maiden who sleeps in the wave. | 40 |
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