To wander like a restless child away.
Oh, if there were not better hopes than these-
Were there no palm beyond a feverish fame- ·
If the proud wealth flung back upon the heart
Must canker in its coffers-if the links
Falsehood hath broken will unite no more-
If the deep-vearning love, that hath not found.
Its like in the cold world, must waste in tears-
If truth, and fervor, and devotedness,
Finding no worthy altar, must return
And die of their own fulness-if beyond
The grave there is no heaven in whose wide air
The spirit may find room, and in the love
Of whose bright habitants the lavish heart
May spend itself-what thrice-mock'd fools are we!
THE SCHOLAR OF THEBET BEN KHORAT.*
"Influentia cœli morbum hunc movet, interdum omnibus aliis amotis."Melancthon de Anima, Cap. de Humoribus.
NIGHT in Arabia. An hour ago,
Pale Dian had descended from the sky,
A famous Arabian astrologer, who is said to have spent forty years in discovering the motion of the eighth sphere. He had a scholar, a young Bedouin Arab, who, with a singular passion for knowledge, abandoned his wandering tribe, and, applying himself too closely to astrology, lost his reason and died.
Flinging her cestus out upon the sea,
And at their watches, now, the solemn stars
Stood vigilant and lone; and, dead asleep,
With not a shadow moving on its breast,
The breathing earth lay in its silver dew,
And, trembling on their myriad viewless wings,
Th' imprison'd odors left the flowers to dream,
And stole away upon the yielding air.
Ben Khorat's tower stands shadowy and tall
In Mecca's loneliest street; and ever there,
When night is at the deepest, burns his lamp
As constant as the Cynosure, and forth
From his loop'd window stretch the brazen tubes,
Pointing forever at the central star
Of that dim nebula just lifting now
Over Mount Arafat. The sky to-night
Is of a clearer blackness than is wont,
And far within its depths the colored stars*
Sparkle like gems-capricious Antarest
Flushing and paling in the Southern arch;
"Even to the naked eye, the stars appear of palpably different colors; but when viewed with a prismatic glass, they may be very accurately classed into the red, the yellow, the brilliant white, the dull white, and the anomalous. This is true also of the planets, which shine by reflected light, and of course the difference of color must be supposed to arise from their dif ferent powers to absorb and reflect the rays of the 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 color of its light; every alternate twinkling being of an intense reddish crimson color, and the answering one of a brilliant white.
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 even a star may pass from heaven
And not be miss'd!)—the linkéd Pleiades
Undimm'd are there, though from the sister band
The fairest has gone down; and, South away,
Hirundo with its little company;
And white-brow'd Vesta, lamping on her path
Lonely and planet-calm, and, all through heaven,
Articulate almost, they troop to-night,
Like unrobed 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,
Play'd with the entering wind upon his cheeks,
* When seen with a prismatic glass, Sirius shows a large brush of exceedingly beautiful rays.
+ The Pleiades are vertical in Arabia.
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 on his breast his venerable beard
With supernatural whiteness loosely fell.
The black flesh swell'd about his sandal-thongs,
Tight with his painful posture, and his lean
And wither'd fingers to his knees were clench'd,
And the thin lashes of his straining eye
Lay with unwinking closeness to the lens,
Stiffen'd with tense up-turning. Hour by hour,
Till the stars melted in the flush of morn,
The old astrologer knelt moveless there,
Ravish'd 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 look'd forth
Upon the heavens awhile, until the dews
And the soft beauty of the silent night
Cool'd his flush'd eyelids, and then patiently
He turn'd 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 clasp'd 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 walk'd alone,
Waiting all night for thee, resplendent one!
With what magnificence,
In the last watches, to my thirsting eye,
Thy passionate beauty flush'd 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
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