And does the long-left home she seeks Light up no gladness on her cheeks? The flowers she nurs’d—the well-known groves, Where oft in dreams her spirit roves— Once more to see her dear gazelles Come bounding with their silver bells; Her birds’ new plumage to behold, And the gay, gleaming fishes count, She left, all filleted with gold, Shooting around their jasper fount;[274] Her little garden mosque to see, And once again, at evening hour, To tell her ruby rosary[275] In her own sweet acacia bower.— Can these delights, that wait her now, Call up no sunshine on her brow? No,—silent, from her train apart,— As if e’en now she felt at heart The chill of her approaching doom,— She sits, all lovely in her gloom As a pale Angel of the Grave; And o’er the wide, tempestuous wave, Looks, with a shudder, to those towers, Where, in a few short awful hours, Blood, blood, in streaming tides shall run. Foul incense for to-morrow’s sun! “Where art thou, glorious stranger! thou, “So loved, so lost, where art thou now? “Foe—Gheber—infidel—whate’er “The’ unhallow’d name thou’rt doom’d to bear, “Still glorious—still to this fond heart “Dear as its blood, whate’er thou art! “Yes—ALLA, dreadful ALLA! yes— “If there be wrong, be crime in this, “Let the black waves that round us roll, “Whelm me this instant, ere my soul, “Forgetting faith—home—father—all— “Before its earthly idol fall, “Nor worship e’en Thyself above him— “For, oh, so wildly do I love him, “Thy Paradise itself were dim “And joyless, if not shared with him!” Her hands were clasp’d—her eyes upturn’d, Dropping their tears like moonlight rain; And, though her lip, fond raver! burn’d With words of passion, bold, profane, Yet was there light around her brow, A holiness in those dark eyes, Which show’d, though wandering earthward now, Her spirit’s home was in the skies. Yes—for a spirit pure as hers Is always pure, e’en while it errs; As sunshine, broken in the rill, Though turn’d astray, is sunshine still!