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FROM THE FIRE WORSHIPPERS.

At midnight, and his carnage plies:

:

Woe to the half-dead wretch, who meets
The glaring of those large blue eyes,

Amid the darkness of the streets!

443

FROM THE FIRE WORSHIPPERS.1

HINDA'S DESPAIR.

She now has reach'd that dismal spot,

Where, some hours since, his voice's tone

Had come to soothe her fears and ills,
Sweet as the angel Israfil's,2
When every leaf on Eden's tree
Is trembling to his minstrelsy-
Yet now-oh, now, he is not nigh.—
"Hafed! my Hafed !-if it be
Thy will, thy doom this night to die,
Let me but stay to die with thee,
And I will bless thy loved name,
Till the last life-breath leave this frame.
Oh! let our lips, our cheeks be laid
But near each other while they fade;
Let us but mix our parting breaths,
And I can die ten thousand deaths!
You, too, who hurry me away
So cruelly, one moment stay-

Oh! stay-one moment is not much-
He yet may come-for him I pray-
Hafed! dear Hafed !"-all the way
In wild lamentings, that would touch
A heart of stone, she shriek'd his name
To the dark woods-no Hafed came :-
No-hapless pair-you've look'd your last :-
Your hearts should both have broken then :
The dream is o'er-your doom is cast-
You'll never meet on earth again!

1 "The Ghebers (a word said by Gibbon to give origin to the Turkish term Giaour, an infidel), the Persians of the old religion," who, on the irruption of the Arab Saracens to conquer their country and extinguish their faith, either resisted or fled into foreign countries. Their descendants, under the title of Parsees, are numerous in the north-west of India.

2 "The angel, who has the most melodious voice of all God's creatures."-Sale. 3 In Mr. Moore's love pictures, beautifully as they are adapted to the phases of the passion in the climes where the scene is placed, we miss the higher and nobler attributes with which the emotion is invested in the writings of many of his contemporaries.

DIRGE OF HINDA.

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.
Oh! fair as the sea-flower close to thee growing,
How light was thy heart till love's witchery came,
Like the wind of the south1 o'er a summer lute blowing,
And hush'd all its music, and wither'd 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 nought but the sea-star2 to light up her tomb.

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Nor shall Iran,3 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,
Embalm'd in the innermost shrine of her heart.

Farewell-be it ours to embellish thy pillow

With every thing 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 this wave.

1 "This wind (the Samoor) so softens the strings of lutes, that they can never be tuned while it lasts."-Stephen's Persia.

2 "One of the greatest curiosities found in the Persian Gulf is a fish which the English call star-fish. It is circular, and at night very luminous, resembling the full moon surrounded by rays."-Mirza-Abu-Taleb. The gulf yields a prolific pearl fishery.

8 The native appellation of Persia.

"Some naturalists have imagined that amber is a concretion of the tears of birds."-See Trevoux, Chambers.

5 "The bay of Kieselarke, which is otherwise called the Golden Bay, the sand whereof shines as fire."-Stray.

6 Comp. Collins, Dirge on Thomson

"And mourned till pity's self be dead."

** The explanatory notes to the extracts from Moore are chiefly the author's.

TO T. L. H., SIX YEARS OLD.

445

LEIGH HUNT.

(1784-1859.)

FOR half a century Leigh Hunt was before the public as a writer of essays, poems, plays, novels, and criticism. He was a native of Southgate, Middlesex, and educated at Christ Hospital. Certain extreme opinions on questions of religion and politics raised up against him many enemies, and he was charged with ingratitude for writing against Lord Byron, with whom he had lived in Italy. The last was a capital error, which he regretted; but Leigh Hunt survived to be a general favourite with the public and to enjoy the bounty of the crown. He was a man

of a genial, happy temperament, and devotedly attached to literature. Some of his essays and poems will live, for they are marked by fine suggestive thought and observation, and, despite occasional conceits, by felicitous expression.

TO T. L. H., SIX YEARS OLD, DURING A SICKNESS.

SLEEP breathes at last from out thee,
My little patient boy;

And balmy rest about thee

Smooths off the day's annoy.

I sit me down and think
Of all thy winning ways;
Yet almost wish, with sudden shrink,
That I had less to praise.

Sorrows, I've had severe ones,
I will not think of now;
And calmly 'midst my dear ones,
Have wasted with dry brow;
But when thy fingers press
And pat my stooping head,
I cannot bear the gentleness,
The tears are in their bed.

Ah, first-born of thy mother,
When life and hope were new ;
Kind playmate of thy brother,
Thy sister, father, too;
My light where'er I go,
My bird when prison-bound,
My hand-in-hand companion-no,

My prayers shall hold thee round.

To say "he has departed"-
"His voice-his face-is gone!"

To feel impatient-hearted,

Yet feel we must bear on ;

Ah, I could not endure
To whisper of such woe,
Unless I felt this sleep ensure
That it will not be so.

Yes, still he's fixed and sleeping,
This silence too, the while-
Its very hush and creeping
Seem whispering as a smile:
Something divine and dim
Seems going by one's ear,
Like parting wings of Cherubim,
Who say, "We've finished here."

ITALIAN SCENE-RAVENNA.

'TIS morn, and never did a lovelier day
Salute Ravenna from its leafy bay:

For a warm eve, and gentle rains at night,
Have left a sparkling welcome for the light,
And April, with his white hands wet with flowers,
Dazzles the bride-maids looking from the towers:
Green vineyards and fair orchards, far and near,
Glitter with drops, and heaven is sapphire clear,
And the lark rings it, and the pine trees glow,
And odours from the citrons come and go,

And all the landscape-earth, and sky, and sea,
Breathes like a bright-eyed face that laughs out openly.

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The seats with boughs are shaded from above
Of bays and roses-trees of wit and love;

And in the midst, fresh whistling through the scene,
The lightsome fountain starts from out the green,
Clear and compact; till, at its height o'errun,
It shakes its loosening silver in the sun.

ALLAN CUNNINGHAM.

(1785-1842.)

THIS poet, novelist, and miscellaneous writer, was born in Dumfriesshire. He began life as a stone mason; but his early literary ability was such that, being introduced to Cromek, the editor of "Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway song," and undertaking to procure contributions to that work, he sent to the Editor, as genuine remains, compositions of his own. Cromek had slighted some original pieces shewn to him as the production of Cunningham, and in retaliation, the young poet presented him with fabricated "antiques." These form the bulk of Cromek's collection. The cheat was long unsuspected; but the suspicious sagacity of the Ettrick Shepherd and others, especially Professor

I

THE SUN RISES BRIGHT IN FRANCE.

447

Wilson (see Blackwood's Magazine, Dec. 1819), ultimately demonstrated the imposition, much to the reputation of the real author.

Mr. Cunningham repaired in 1810 to London, and, obtaining an appointment of trust in the sculptor Chantrey's studio, he settled himself there for life.

His larger works are, the "Maid of Elvar," a species of epic in Spenserian stanzas, illustrative of Dumfries-shire in days of yore; and "Sir Marmaduke Maxwell," a wild tumultuous collection of Border superstitions. His reputation rests chiefly on his smaller pieces, which are intensely Scotch; vigorous and even splendid in their higher moods, affectingly pathetic in their softer strains. His novels, "Paul Jones," etc., are full of glittering description, and exaggerated and unnatural character.

THE SUN RISES BRIGHT IN FRANCE.1

THE sun rises bright in France,
And fair sets he;

But he has tint the blythe blink he had
In my ain countree.

O it's nae my ain ruin

That saddens aye my e'e,
But the dear Marie I left ahin',
Wi' sweet bairnies three.

My lanely hearth burn'd bonnie,
An' smiled my ain Marie;
I've left a' my heart behin'
In my ain countree.

The bud comes back to summer,

And the blossom to the bee;

But I'll win back -O never,
To my ain countree.

O I am leal to high Heaven,
Where soon I hope to be,
An' there I'll meet ye a' soon
Frae my ain countree !

A WET SHEET AND A FLOWING SEA.2

A wet sheet and a flowing sea,

A wind that follows fast,

And fills the white and rustling sail,

And bends the gallant mast;

1 "The Sun rises bright in France' is a sweet old thing, very popular both in Scotland and England. I got some stanzas from Surtees of Mainsforth: but those printed are from Cromek. It is uncertain to what period the song refers."-Hogg, Jacobite Relics.

2 I look upon the alteration of "It's hame and it's hame," and "A wet sheet and flowing sea," as among the best songs going. -Sir Walter Scott, Diary, 14th Nov. 1826.

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