Bāzindah had no shelter from the storm—no refuge from the pitiless hail and searching wind; in vain he tried to hide beneath some friendly branch or amidst the leaves and grass, still the cruel hail pelted him like some remorseless foe, and the cold rain still poured upon him.
“Night! gloomy night!—Heaven’s awful voice—
What tempest shower so fierce as this?
What care the gay in banquet halls?
Our perils do not mar their bliss.”
In terror and peril, the traveler passed the night thinking of the home-nest, and the gentle mate who would so gladly shield him from the storm with her own pinions, and who was even now grieving her life away in loneliness, because he came not.
But whatever feelings of penitence may have been cherished during the perils of the night, were quickly dissipated by the beauty of the morning light.
“From the east then drew the sun,
His golden poniard bright,
And through the earth’s dark regions