On either side, with ready hearts and hands, His chosen guard of bold Believers stands; Young fire-eyed disputants, who deem their swords, On points of faith, more eloquent than words; And such their zeal, there’s not a youth with brand Uplifted there, but, at the Chief’s command, Would make his own devoted heart its sheath, And bless the lips that doom’d so dear a death! In hatred to the Caliph’s hue of night,[30] Their vesture, helms and all, is snowy white; Their weapons various—some equipp’d for speed, With javelins of the light Kathaian reed;[31] Or bows of buffalo horn and shining quivers Fill’d with the stems[32] that bloom on IRAN’S rivers;[33] While some, for war’s more terrible attacks, Wield the huge mace and ponderous battle-axe; And as they wave aloft in morning’s beam The milk-white plumage of their helms, they seem Like a chenar-tree grove,[34] when winter throws O’er all its tufted heads his feathering snows. Between the porphyry pillars, that uphold The rich moresque-work of the roof of gold, Aloft the Haram’s curtain’d galleries rise, Where, through the silken net-work, glancing eyes, From time to time, like sudden gleams that glow Through autumn clouds, shine o’er the pomp below.— What impious tongue, ye blushing saints, would dare To hint that aught but Heaven hath plac’d you there? Or that the loves of this light world could bind, In their gross chain, your Prophet’s soaring mind? No—wrongful thought!—commission’d from above To people Eden’s bowers with shapes of love, (Creatures so bright, that the same lips and eyes They wear on earth will serve in Paradise,) There to recline among Heaven’s native maids, And crown the’ Elect with bliss that never fades— Well hath the Prophet-Chief his bidding done; And every beauteous race beneath the sun, From those who kneel at BRAHMA’S burning founts,[35] To the fresh nymphs bounding o’er YEMEN’S mounts; From PERSIA’S eyes of full and fawn-like ray To the small, half-shut glances of KATHAY;[36] And GEORGIA’S bloom, and AZAB’S darker smiles, And the gold ringlets of the Western Isles; All, all are there;—each Land its flower hath given, To form that fair young Nursery for Heaven! But why this pageant now? this arm’d array? What triumph crowds the rich Divan to-day With turban’d heads, of every hue and race, Bowing before that veil’d and awful face, Like tulip-beds,[37] of different shape and dyes, Bending beneath the’ invisible West-wind’s sighs! What new-made mystery now, for Faith to sign, And blood to seal, as genuine and divine, What dazzling mimickry of God’s own power Hath the bold Prophet plann’d to grace this hour?