But safe as yet that Spirit of Evil lives; With a small band of desperate fugitives, The last sole stubborn fragment, left unriven, Of the proud host that late stood fronting Heaven, He gain’d MEROU—breath’d a short curse of blood O’er his lost throne—then pass’d the JIHON’S flood,[125] And gathering all, whose madness of belief Still saw a Saviour in their down-fall’n Chief, Rais’d the white banner within NEKSHEB’S gates,[126] And there, untam’d, the’ approaching conqu’ror waits. Of all his Haram, all that busy hive, With music and with sweets sparkling alive, He took but one, the partner of his flight, One—not for love—not for her beauty’s light— No, ZELICA stood withering midst the gay, Wan as the blossom that fell yesterday From the’ Alma tree and dies, while overhead To-day’s young flower is springing in its stead.[127] Oh, not for love—the deepest Damn’d must be Touch’d with Heaven’s glory, ere such fiends as he Can feel one glimpse of Love’s divinity. But no, she is his victim; _there_ lie all Her charms for him—charms that can never pall, As long as hell within his heart can stir, Or one faint trace of Heaven is left in her. To work an angel’s ruin,—to behold As white a page as Virtue e’er unroll’d Blacken, beneath his touch, into a scroll Of damning sins, seal’d with a burning soul— This is his triumph; this the joy accurst, That ranks him among demons all but first: This gives the victim, that before him lies Blighted and lost, a glory in his eyes, A light like that with which hell-fire illumes The ghastly, writhing wretch whom it consumes!