Rebellion! foul, dishonouring word, Whose wrongful blight so oft has stain’d The holiest cause that tongue or sword Of mortal ever lost or gain’d. How many a spirit, born to bless, Hath sunk beneath that withering name, Whom but a day’s, an hour’s success Had wafted to eternal fame! As exhalations, when they burst From the warm earth, if chill’d at first, If check’d in soaring from the plain, Darken to fogs and sink again;— But, if they once triumphant spread Their wings above the mountain-head, Become enthroned in upper air, And turn to sun-bright glories there! And who is he, that wields the might Of Freedom on the Green Sea brink, Before whose sabre’s dazzling light[246] The eyes of YEMEN’S warriors wink? Who comes, embower’d in the spears Of KERMAN’S hardy mountaineers?— Those mountaineers that truest, last, Cling to their country’s ancient rites, As if that God, whose eyelids cast Their closing gleam on IRAN’S heights, Among her snowy mountains threw The last light of his worship too! ’Tis HAFED—name of fear, whose sound Chills like the muttering of a charm!— Shout but that awful name around, And palsy shakes the manliest arm. ’Tis HAFED, most accurs’d and dire (So rank’d by Moslem hate and ire) Of all the rebel Sons of Fire; Of whose malign, tremendous power The Arabs, at their mid-watch hour, Such tales of fearful wonder tell, That each affrighted sentinel Pulls down his cowl upon his eyes, Lest HAFED in the midst should rise! A man, they say, of monstrous birth, A mingled race of flame and earth, Sprung from those old, enchanted kings,[247] Who in their fairy helms, of yore, A feather from the mystic wings Of the Simoorgh resistless wore; And gifted by the Fiends of Fire, Who groan’d to see their shrines expire, With charms that, all in vain withstood, Would drown the Koran’s light in blood!