The Princess, who had once in her life seen a poet from behind the screens of gauze in her Father’s hall, and had conceived from that specimen no very favourable ideas of the Caste, expected but little in this new exhibition to interest her;—she felt inclined, however, to alter her opinion on the very first appearance of FERAMORZ. He was a youth about LALLA ROOKH’S own age, and graceful as that idol of women, Crishna,[22]—such as he appears to their young imaginations, heroic, beautiful, breathing music from his very eyes, and exalting the religion of his worshippers into love. His dress was simple, yet not without some marks of costliness; and the ladies of the Princess were not long in discovering that the cloth, which encircled his high Tartarian cap, was of the most delicate kind that the shawl-goats of Tibet supply.[23] Here and there, too, over his vest, which was confined by a flowered girdle of Kashan, hung strings of fine pearl, disposed with an air of studied negligence:—nor did the exquisite embroidery of his sandals escape the observation of these fair critics; who, however they might give way to FADLADEEN upon the unimportant topics of religion and government, had the spirit of martyrs in every thing relating to such momentous matters as jewels and embroidery. For the purpose of relieving the pauses of recitation by music, the young Cashmerian held in his hand a kitar;—such as, in old times, the Arab maids of the West used to listen to by moonlight in the gardens of the Alhambra—and, having premised, with much humility, that the story he was about to relate was founded on the adventures of that Veiled Prophet of Khorassan,[24] who, in the year of the Hegira 163, created such alarm throughout the Eastern Empire, made an obeisance to the Princess, and thus began:— ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan[25] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ In that delightful Province of the Sun, The first of Persian lands he shines upon, Where all the loveliest children of his beam, Flow’rets and fruits, blush over every stream,[26] And, fairest of all streams, the MURGA roves Among MEROU’S[27] bright palaces and groves;— There on that throne, to which the blind belief Of millions rais’d him, sat the Prophet-Chief, The Great MOKANNA. O’er his features hung The Veil, the Silver Veil, which he had flung In mercy there, to hide from mortal sight His dazzling brow, till man could bear its light. For, far less luminous, his votaries said, Were ev’n the gleams, miraculously shed O’er MOUSSA’S[28] cheek,[29] when down the Mount he trod, All glowing from the presence of his God!