Where Laila lies, who loved so well;
And every youth who passes there,
Says for Manuel’s soul a prayer.
Southey, The Lovers’ Rock (a ballad, 1798, taken from Mariana, De la Pena de los Enamorados.)
Laila, daughter of Okba, the sorcerer. It was decreed that either Laila or Thalaba must die. Thalaba refused to redeem his own life by killing Laila; and Okba exultingly cried, “As thou hast disobeyed the voice of Allah, God hath abandoned thee, and this hour is mine.” So saying, he rushed on the youth; but Laila, intervening to protect him, received the blow, and was killed. Thalaba lived on, and the spirit of Laila, in the form of a green bird, conducted him to the simorg (q.v.), which he sought, that he might be directed to Dom-Daniel, the cavern “under the roots of the ocean.”—Southey, Thalaba the Destroyer, x. (1797).
La´is (2 syl.), a generic name for a courtezan. Laïs was a Greek hetæra who sold her favors for £200 English money. When Demosthenês was told the amount of the fee, he said he had “no mind to buy repentance at such a price.” One of her great admirers was Diog´enês, the cynic.
This is the cause
That Lais leads a lady’s life aloft.
G. Gascoigne, The Steele Glas (died 1577).
Lake Poets (The), Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge, who lived about the lakes of Cumberland. According to Mr. Jeffrey, the conductor of the Edinburgh Review, they combined the sentimentality of Rousseau with the simplicity of Kotzebue and the homeliness of Cowper. Of the same school were Lamb, Lloyd, and Wilson. Also called “Lakers” and “Lakists.”