“Farewell to thee, Araby’s daughter”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852)

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.

O, fair as the sea-flower close to thee growing,

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!

But long, upon Araby’s green sunny highlands,

Shall maids and their lovers remember the doom

Of her who lies sleeping among the Pearl Islands,

With naught but the sea-star to light up her tomb.

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

At sunset, will weep when thy story is told.

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.

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.

Farewell!—be it ours to embellish thy pillow

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.

Around thee shall glisten the loveliest amber

That ever the sorrowing sea-bird has wept;

With many a shell, in whose hollow-wreathed chamber,

We, Peris of ocean, by moonlight have slept.

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,

And gather their gold to strew over thy bed.

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.