“Speak to my question!” she exclaimed,
“Or in that mangled body thou shall live
“Ages of torture! answer me!
“Where can we find the Boy?”
“God! God! Hodeirah cried,
“Release me from this life,
“From this intolerable agony!”
“Speak!” cried the Sorceress; and she snatched
A Viper from the floor,
And with the living reptile lashed[25] his neck.
Wreathed, round him with the blow,
The Reptile tighter drew her folds
And raised her wrathful head,
And fixed into his face
Her deadly teeth, and shed
Poison in every wound.
In vain! for Allah heard Hodeirah’s prayer,
And Khawla on a corpse
Had wrecked her baffled rage.
The fated fire moved on
And round the Body wrapt its funeral flames.
The flesh and bones in that portentous pile
Consumed; the Sword alone,
Circled with fire was left.
Where is the Boy for whose hand it is destined?
Where the Destroyer who one day shall wield
The Sword that is circled with fire?
Race accursed, try your charms!
Masters of the mighty Spell,
Mutter o’er your words of power!
Ye can shatter the dwellings of man,
Ye can open the womb of the rock,
Ye can shake the foundations of earth,
But not the Word of God:
But not one letter can ye change
Of what his Will hath written!
Who shall seek thro’ Araby
Hodeirah’s dreaded son?
They mingle the Arrows[26] of Chance
The lot of Abdaldar is drawn.
Thirteen moons must wax and wane
Ere the Sorcerer quit his quest.
He must visit every tribe
That roam the desert wilderness,
Or dwell beside perennial streams;
Nor leave a solitary tent unsearched
Till he has found the Boy,
The hated Boy whose blood alone
Can quench that dreaded fire.
A crystal ring Abdaldar bore,
The powerful gem[27] condensed
Primeval dews that upon Caucasus
Felt the first winter’s frost.
Ripening there it lay beneath
Rock above rock, and mountain ice up-piled
On mountain, till the incumbent mass assumed,
So huge its bulk, the Ocean’s azure hue.
With this he sought the inner den
Where burnt the eternal flame.
Like waters gushing from some channelled rock
Full thro’ a narrow opening, from a chasm
The eternal flame streamed up.
No eye beheld the fount
Of that up-flowing flame,
That blazed self-nurtured, and for ever, there.
It was no mortal element: the Abyss
Supplied it, from the fountains at the first
Prepared. In the heart of earth it lives and glows
Her vital heat, till at the day decreed,
The voice of God shall let its billows loose,
To deluge o’er with no abating flood
The consummated World;
That thenceforth thro’ the air must roll,
The penal Orb of Fire.
Unturbaned and unsandalled there,
Abdaldar stood before the flame,
And held the Ring beside, and spake
The language that the Elements obey.
The obedient flame detatched a portion forth,
That, in the crystal entering, was condensed,
Gem of the gem, its living Eye of fire.
When the hand that wears the spell
Shall touch the destined Boy,
Then shall that Eye be quenched,
And the freed Element
Fly to its sacred and remembered Spring.
Now go thy way Abdaldar!
Servant of Eblis,
Over Arabia
Seek the Destroyer!
Over the sands of the scorching Tchama,
Over the waterless mountains of Naïd,
In Arud pursue him; and Yemen the happy,
And Hejaz, the country beloved by believers.
Over Arabia
Servant of Eblis,
Seek the Destroyer.
From tribe to tribe, from town to town,
From tent to tent, Abdaldar past.
Him every morn the all-beholding Eye
Saw from his couch, unhallowed by a prayer,
Rise to the scent of blood,
And every night lie down.
That rankling hope within him, that by day
Goaded his steps, still stinging him in sleep,
And startling him with vain accomplishment
From visions still the same.
Many a time his wary hand
To many a youth applied the Ring,
And still the dagger in his mantle hid
Was ready for the deed.