“A voice not earthly thus addressed The Sīmūrgh in her mountain nest— To thee this mortal I resign, Protected by the power divine. Let him thy fostering kindness share, Nourish him with maternal care; For, from his loins in time will spring The champion of the world, and bring Honor on earth, and make thy name The heir of everlasting fame.” The bird listened to the voice, and peering down between the mountain crags and rocky cliffs, she saw a man with coward heart leaving a tender babe upon one of the foot-hills. Her mother-heart beat faster while she waited a moment listening to the coming storm, and then the strong wings moved upward through the darkness, and circling round in stately flight, she swept nearer and nearer to the desolate babe. Down she came at last, and the little one looked up with wondering eyes upon the great mass of plumage that seemed to have been borne to him upon the wings of the coming storm, and the boy smiled and reached out his baby hands toward his new-found friend. The tender mother-bird fastened her talons carefully in his little dress, and floated away past mountain stream and rocky crags, beyond the foothills and the higher peaks, until she reached the wondrous nest hidden amidst the stones of fire. A sweet, familiar note caused the nestlings to cling more closely together, and here, in the newly made space, the banished child was laid, and his shelter from the cruel storm that night was the golden feathers of the Sīmūrgh. When the sunlight touched the white cliffs and lighted up the fires in ruby and opal, the great bird was awakened by a strange cry beneath her wing, and she remembered the human nestling within her habitation. Then, like the sacred bird of Jove, she rises from her nest, and “Wide as appears some palace gate displayed, So broad the pinions stretched their ample shade, As stooping dexter with resounding wings, The imperial bird descends in airy rings.”[243] Not as a guide to the tent of Achilles does the Sīmūrgh wheel her lofty flight, but to find food for the helpless babe within her walls. With dainty bits within her bill she comes again to her mountain home, and the stranger babe is fed before her own young have broken their fast. The Sīmūrgh’s nestlings learned from the mother-bird the lessons of mercy and love, and soon on tender wing they too brought dainties to the banished child, and year after year he lived in the Sīmūrgh’s home, or played amidst the rough jewels in the crags around her nest. THE FATHER’S DREAM.