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What fascination is it chains my feet, And keeps me gazing like a curious child Into the holy places, where the priests Have raised their altar? Striking stones together,

They take fire out of them, and light the lamps

In the great candlestick. They spread the veils,

And set the loaves of showbread on the table.

The incense burns; the well-remembered odor

Comes wafted unto me, and takes me back

To other days. I see myself among them As I was then; and the old superstition Creeps over me again! A childish fancy!

And hark! they sing with eitherns and with cymbals,

And all the people fall upon their faces,
Praying and worshipping! I will away
Into the East, to meet Antiochus
Upon his homeward journey, crowned
with triumph.

Alas! to-day I would give everything
To see a friend's face, or to hear a voice
That had the slightest tone of comfort
in it!

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Ant. Sleep from mine eyes is gone, And my heart faileth me for very care. Dost thou remember, Philip, the old fable

Told us when we were boys, in which the bear

And is stung blind by bees? I am that Going for honey overturns the hive, beast,

Stung by the Persian swarms of Elymais. Philip. When thou art come again to Antioch

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My elephants shall trample him to dust; I will wipe out his nation, and will make

Jerusalem a common burying-place,

SCENE II. - ANTIOCHUS; PHILIP; A MES- And every home within its walls a

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O mockery!

tomb!

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Philip.

O my Lord,

Even Lysias laughs at me! - Go on, go | Thou shalt not die; we will not let thee

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die !

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bear him

Bring here the royal litter. We will Unto my son, Antiochus Eupator;
And unto the good Jews, my citizens,
In all my towns, say that their dying

Into the camp, while yet he lives.

Ant.
0 Philip,
Into what tribulation am I come!
Alas! I now remember all the evil
That I have done the Jews; and for this

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monarch

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A HANDFUL OF TRANSLATIONS.

[Dics.

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"This hand no longer shall

On the swans of the Seven Lakes,
On the lakes of Karajal.

"I will no longer stray
And pasture my hunting steeds
In the long grass and the reeds
Of the meadows of Karaday.

"Though thou give me thy coat of mail,
Of softest leather made,
With choicest steel inlaid,
All this cannot prevail.

"What right hast thou, O Khan,
To me, who am mine own,
Who am slave to God alone,
And not to any man?

God will appoint the day
When I again shall be
By the blue, shallow sea,
Where the steel-bright sturgeons play.

"God, who doth care for me,
In the barren wilderness,
On unknown hills, no less
Will my companion be.

"When I wander lonely and lost
In the wind; when I watch at night
Like a hungry wolf, and am white
And covered with hoar-frost ;

"Yea, wheresoever I be,

Cast my hawks, when morning breaks, In the yellow desert sands,

In mountains or unknown lands, Allah will care for me!"

III.

Then Sobra, the old, old man,
Three hundred and sixty years
Had he lived in this land of tears,
Bowed down and said, "O Khan !

"If you bid me, I will speak.
There's no sap in dry grass,
No marrow in dry bones! Alas,
The mind of old men is weak!

"I am old, I am very old:
I have seen the primeval man,
I have seen the great Gengis Khan,
Arrayed in his robes of gold.

"What I say to you is the truth;
And I say to you, O Khan,
Pursue not the star-white man,
Pursue not the beautiful youth.

"Him the Almighty ade,
And brought him forth of the light,
At the verge and end of the night,
When men on the mountain prayed.

"He was born at the break of day,
When abroad the angels walk;
He hath listened to their talk,
And he knoweth what they say.

"Gifted with Allah's grace,
Like the moon of Ramazan
When it shines in the skies, O Khan,
Is the light of his beautiful face.

"When first on earth he trod,
The first words that he said
Were these, as he stood and prayed,
There is no God but God !

"And he shall be king of men, For Allah hath heard his prayer, And the Archangel in the air, Gabriel, hath said, Amen!

THE SIEGE OF KAZAN.

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Brook, to what river dost thou go? O my brooklet cool and sweet!

Tartar Song, from the Prose Version of I go to the river there below

Chodzko.

BLACK are the moors before Kazan,

Where in bunches the violets grow, And sun and shadow meet.

And their stagnant waters smell of Brook, to what garden dost thou go?

blood:

O my brooklet cool and sweet!

I go to the garden in the vale
Where all night long the nightingale
Her love-song doth repeat.

Brook, to what fountain dost thou go?
O my brooklet cool and sweet!
I go to the fountain at whose brink

CONSOLATION.

To M. Duperrier, Gentleman of Aix in Provence, on the Death of his Daughter.

FROM MALHERBE.

The maid that loves thee comes to WILL then, Duperrier, thy sorrow be

drink,

And whenever she looks therein,

I rise to meet her, and kiss her chin,
And my joy is then complete.

TO THE STORK.

Armenian Popular Song, from the Prose
Version of Alishan.

WELCOME, O Stork! that dost wing
Thy flight from the far-away!

eternal?

And shall the sad discourse

Whispered within thy heart, by tenderness paternal,

Only augment its force?

Thy daughter's mournful fate, into the tomb descending

By death's frequented ways, Has it become to thee a labyrinth never ending,

Where thy lost reason strays?

Thou hast brought us the signs of I know the charms that made her youth

Spring,

Thou hast made our sad hearts gay.

Descend, O Stork! descend
Upon our roof to rest;
In our ash-tree, O my friend,
My darling, make thy nest.

To thee, O Stork, I complain,

O Stork, to thee I impart
The thousand sorrows, the pain
And aching of my heart.

When thou away didst go,

Away from this tree of ours, The withering winds did blow, And dried up all the flowers.

Dark grew the brilliant sky,

Cloudy and dark and drear;
They were breaking the snow on high,
And winter was drawing near.

From Varaca's rocky wall,

From the rock of Varaca unrolled, The snow came and covered all,

And the green meadow was cold.

O Stork, our garden with snow
Was hidden away and lost,
And the rose-trees that in it grow

Were withered by snow and frost.

a benediction :

Nor should I be content,

As a censorious friend, to solace thine

affliction

By her disparagement.

But she was of the world, which fairest things exposes

To fates the most forlorn; A rose, she too hath lived as long as live the roses,

The space of one brief morn.

Death has his rigorous laws, unparal leled, unfeeling;

All prayers to him are vain ; Cruel, he stops his ears, and, deaf to our appealing,

He leaves us to complain.

The poor man in his hut, with only thatch for cover,

Unto these laws must bend; The sentinel that guards the barriers of the Louvre

Cannot our kings defend.

To murmur against death, in petulant defiance,

Is never for the best;

To will what God doth will, that is the only science

That gives us any rest.

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