Sparkle like gems-capricious Antares *
Flushing and paling in the Southern arch,
And azure Lyra, like a woman's eye,
Burning with soft blue lustre, and away
Over the desert the bright Polar-star,

White as a flashing icicle, and here,
Hung like a lamp above th' Arabian sea,
Mars with his dusky glow, and, fairer yet,
Mild Sirius, tinct with dewy violet,

Set like a flower upon the breast of Eve;

And in the zenith the sweet Pleiades,+

(Alas-that ev'n a star may pass from heaven

And not be miss'd!)—the linked Pleiades

sun. The original composition of the stars, and the different dispersive powers of their different atmospheres, may be supposed to account also for this phenomenon."

* This star exhibits a peculiar quality—a rapid and beautiful change in the colour of its light; every alternate twinkling being of an intense reddish crimson colour, and the answering one of a brilliant white.

When seen with a prismatic glass, Sirius shows a large brush of exceedingly beautiful violet rays.

The Pleiades are vertical in Arabia.

Undimmed are there, though from the sister band
The fairest has gone down, and, South away,
Hirundo* with its little company,

And white-browed Vesta, lamping on her path
Lonely and planet-calm, and, all through heaven,
Articulate almost, they troop to night,

Like unrob'd angels in a prophet's trance.

Ben Khorat knelt before his telescope,+

Gazing with earnest stillness on the stars.
The gray hairs, struggling from his turban folds,
Played with the entering wind upon his cheeks,

And on his breast his venerable beard

With supernatural whiteness loosely fell.

The black flesh swelled about his sandal thongs,
Tight with his painful posture, and his lean

And withered fingers to his knees were clenched,

* An Arabic constellation placed instead of the Piscis Australis, because the swallow arrives in Arabia about the time of the heliacal rising of the Fishes.

An anachronism, the author is aware. The telescope was not invented for a century or two after the time of Ben Khorat.

And the thin lashes of his straining eye

Lay with unwinking closeness to the lens, Stiffened with tense up-turning Hour by hour, Till the stars melted in the flush of morn,

The old astrologer knelt moveless there,

Ravished past pain with the bewildering spheres,
And, hour by hour, with the same patient thought,
Pored his pale scholar on the characters
Of Chaldee writ, or, as his gaze grew dim
With weariness, the dark-eyed Arab laid
His head upon the window and looked forth
Upon the heavens awhile, until the dews
And the soft beauty of the silent night
Cooled his flushed eyelids, and then patiently
He turned unto his constant task again.

The sparry glinting of the Morning Star
Shot through the leaves of a majestic palm
Fringing Mount Arafat, and, as it caught
The eye of the rapt scholar, he arose

And clasped the volume with an eager haste,

And as the glorious planet mounted on,
Melting her way into the upper sky,

He breathlessly gazed on her :

"Star of the silver ray!

Bright as a god, but punctual as a slave—
What spirit the eternal canon gave

That bends thee to thy way?

What is the soul that on thine arrowy light

Is walking earth and heaven in pride to-night?

We know when thou wilt soar

Over the mount-thy change, and place, and time'Tis written in the Chaldee's mystic rhyme

As 'twere a priceless lore!

I knew as much in my Bedouin garb-
Coursing the desert on my flying barb!

How oft amid the tents

Upon Sahara's sands I've walked alone,
Waiting all night for thee, resplendent one!

With what magnificence,

In the last watches, to my thirsting eye,

Thy passionate beauty flushed into the sky!

Oh, God! how flew my soul

Out to thy glory-upward on thy ray-
Panting as thou ascendedst on thy way,
As if thine own control-

This searchless spirit that I cannot find-
Had set its radiant law upon my mind!

More than all stars in heaven

I felt thee in my heart! my love became
A frenzy, and consumed me with its flame.
Ay, in the desert even-

My dark-eyed Abra coursing at my side—
The star, not Abra, was my spirit's bride!

My Abra is no more!

My desert-bird' is in a stranger's stall—

My tribe, my tent-I sacrificed them all