Is filled with shapes of writhing agony.

The desert trains of turbaned merchants wail

From rear to van, with anguish smitten pale;

Cabool and eldest Balk are resonant

With shriek, and dolorous sigh, and Koran chant;

And Persia’s rosy vales are thickly strewn

With lethal shafts that blight her spicy bloom,

And, through the palace of the Caliphate,

At blazing noontide speeds the wingëd fate;

And over all the fields of ancient Roum