"Her form was lighter, in its shifting grace,
Than some impassioned Almee's, when the dance
Unbinds her scarf, and golden anklets gleam
Through floating drapery, on the buoyant air.
Her light, free head was ever held aloft ;
Between her slender and transparent ears
The silken forelock tossed; her nostril's arch,
Thin-drawn, in proud and pliant beauty spread,
Snuffing the desert winds. Her glossy neck
Curved to the shoulder like an eagle's wing,
And all her matchless lines of flank and limb
Seemed fashioned from the flying shapes of air
By hands of lightning. When the war-shouts rang
From tent to tent, her keen and restless eye
Shone like a blood-red ruby, and her neigh
Rang wild and sharp above the clash of spears,
"The tribes of Tigris and the Desert knew her.
Sofuk before the Shammar bands she bore
To meet the dread Jebours, who waited not
To bid her welcome; and the savage Koord,
Chased from his bold irruption on the plain,
Has seen her hoofprints in his mountain-snow.
Lithe as the dark-eyed Syrian gazelle,
O'er ledge and chasm and barren steep, amid
The Sindjar hills, she ran the wild ass down.
Through many a battle's thickest brunt she stormed,
Reeking with sweat and dust, and fetlock-deep
In curdling gore. When hot and lurid haze
Stifled the crimson sun, she swept before
The whirling sand-spout, till her gusty mane
Flared in its vortex, while the camels lay
Groaning and helpless on the fiery waste.
"The tribes of Taurus and the Caspian knew her :
The Georgian chiefs have heard her trumpet-neigh
Before the walls of Teflis. Pines that grow
On ancient Caucasus have harboured her,
Sleeping by Sofuk in their spicy gloom.
The surf of Trebizond has bathed her flanks,
When from the shore she saw the white-sailed bark
That brought him home from Stamboul.
O Arabs, never yet was like to Kubleh!
'And Sofuk loved her. She was more to him Than all his snowy-bosomed odalisques
For many years, beside his tent she stood,
The glory of the tribe.
Died, while the fire was yet in all her limbs-
Died for the life of Sofuk, whom she loved.
The base Jebours-on whom be Allah's curse!—
Came on his path when far from any camp,
And would have slain him, but that Kubleh sprang
Against the javelin-points and bore them down,
And gained the open desert.
Wounded sore,
She urged her light limbs into maddening speed,
And made the wind a laggard.
On and on
The red sand slid beneath her, and behind
Whirled in a swift and cloudy turbulence,
As when some star of Eblis, downward hurled
By Allah's bolt, sweeps with its burning hair
The waste of darkness. On and on, the bleak
Bare ridges rose before her, came, and passed;
And every flying leap with fresher blood
Her nostril stained, till Sofuk's brow and breast,
Were flecked with crimson foam. He would have turned To save his treasure, though himself were lost,
But Kubleh fiercely snapped the brazen rein.
At last, when through her spent and quivering frame
The sharp throes ran, our distant tents arose,
And, with a neigh whose shrill excess of joy
O'ercame its agony, she stopped and fell.
The Shammar men came round her as she lay,
And Sofuk raised her head, and held it close
Against his breast. Her dull and glazing eye
Met his, and with a shuddering gasp she died.
Then like a child his bursting grief made way
In passionate tears, and with him all the tribe
Wept for the faithful mare.
"They dug her grave
Amid Al-Hather's marbles, where she lies
Buried with ancient kings; and since that time
Was never seen, and will not be again,
O Arabs, though the world be doomed to live
As many moons as count the desert sands,
The like of wondrous Kubleh. God is great!"
AN ORIENTAL IDYL.
A SILVER javelin which the hills
Have hurled upon the plain below,
The fleetest of the Pharpar's rills
Beneath me shoots in flashing flow.
I hear the never-ending laugh
Of jostling waves that come and go,
And suck the bubbling pipe, and quaff
The sherbet cooled in mountain-snow.
The flecks of sunshine gleam like stars
Beneath the canopy of shade;
And in the distant dim bazaars
I scarcely hear the hum of trade.
No evil fear, no dream forlorn,
Darkens my heaven of perfect blue;
My blood is tempered to the morn-
My very heart is steeped in dew.
What Evil is I cannot tell,
But half I guess what Joy may be;
And, as a pearl within its shell,
The happy spirit sleeps in me.
I feel no more the pulse's strife,-
The tides of passion's ruddy sea,-
But live the sweet unconscious life
That breathes from yonder jasmine-tree.
Upon the glittering pageantries
Of gay Damascus streets I look,
As idly as a babe that sees
The painted pictures of a book.
Forgotten now are name and race;
The past is blotted from my brain;
For Memory sleeps, and will not trace
The weary pages o'er again.
I only know the morning shines,
And sweet the dewy morning air;
But does it play with tendrilled vines?
Or does it lightly lift my hair?
Deep sunken in the charmed repose,
This ignorance is bliss extreme:
And, whether I be Man or Rose,
Oh pluck me not from out my dream!
ONCE more without you!-sighing, dear, once more,
For all the sweet accustomed ministries
Of wife and mother: not as when the seas
That parted us my tender message bore
From the grey olives of the Cretan shore
To those that hid the broken Phidian frieze
Of our Athenian home,—but far degrees,
Wide plains, great forests, part us now.
My door
Looks on the rushing Neva, cold and clear:
The swelling domes in hovering splendour lie,
Like golden bubbles eager to be gone,
But the chill crystal of the atmosphere
Withholds them; and along the northern sky
The amber midnight smiles in dreams of dawn.
RICHARD HENRY STODDARD.
[Born in 1825. Author of Footprints, a volume of poems published in 1848; Adventures in Fairyland, in prose; and many miscellaneous writings].
THE trumpet winds have sounded a retreat,
Blowing o'er land and sea a sullen strain ;
Usurping March, defeated, flies again,
And lays his trophies at the Winter's feet.
And lo-where April, coming in his turn,
In changeful motleys, half of light and shade,
Leads his belated charge, a delicate maid,
A nymph with dripping urn.
Hail! hail thrice hail !-thou fairest child of Time,
With all thy retinue of laughing Hours,
Thou paragon from some diviner clime,
And ministrant of its benignest powers!
Who hath not caught the glancing of thy wing,
And peeped beneath thy mask, delicious Spring?
Sometimes we see thee on the pleasant morns
Of lingering March, with wreathèd crook of gold,
Leading the Ram from out his starry fold,
A leash of light around his jagged horns!
Sometimes in April, goading up the skies
The Bull, whose neck Apollo's silvery flies
Settle upon, a many-twinkling swarm;
And when May days are warm,
And drawing to a close,
With Zephyr from his palace in the west,
Thou dost upsnatch the Twins from cradled rest,
And strain them to thy breast,
And haste to meet the expectant bright new-comer,
The opulent queen of Earth, the gay, voluptuous Summer.
Unmuffled now, shorn of thy veil of showers,
Thou tripp'st along the mead with shining hair
Blown back, and scarf out-fluttering on the air,
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