When Thalaba from adoration rose,
The air was cool, the sky
With welcome clouds o’ercast,
That soon came down in rain.
He lifted up his fevered face to heaven,
And bared his head and stretched his hands
To that delightful shower,
And felt the coolness flow thro’ every limb
Freshening his powers of life.
A loud quick panting! Thalaba looks up,
He starts, and his instinctive hand
Grasps the knife hilt: for close beside
A Tyger passes him.
An indolent and languid eye
The passing Tyger turned;
His head was hanging down,
His dry tongue lolling low,
And the short panting of his fevered breath
Came thro’ his hot parched nostrils painfully.
The young Arabian knew
The purport of his hurried pace,
And following him in hope
Saw joyful from afar
The Tyger stoop and drink.
The desert Pelican had built her nest
In that deep solitude.
And now returned from distant flight
Fraught with the river stream,
Her load of water had disburthened there.
Her young in the refreshing bath
Sported all wantonness;
Dipt down their callow heads,
Filled the swoln membrane from their plumeless throat
Pendant, and bills yet soft,
And buoyant with arched breast,
Plied in unpractised stroke
The oars of their broad feet.
They, as the spotted prowler of the wild
Laps the cool wave, around their mother croud,
And nestle underneath her outspread wings.
The spotted prowler of the wild
Lapt the cool wave,[86] and satiate from the nest,
Guiltless of blood, withdrew.
The mother bird had moved not
But cowering o’er her nestlings,
Sate confident and fearless,
And watched the wonted guest.
But when the human visitant approached,
The alarmed Pelican
Retiring from that hostile shape,
Gathers her young, and menaces with wings,
And forward thrusts her threatening neck,
Its feathers ruffling in her wrath,
Bold with maternal fear.
Thalaba drank and in the water-skin
Hoarded the precious element.
Not all he took, but in the large nest left
Store that sufficed for life.
And journeying onward blest the Carrier Bird,
And blest in thankfulness,
Their common Father, provident for all.
With strength renewed and confident in faith
The son of Hodeirah proceeds;
Till after the long toil of many a day,
At length Bagdad appeared,
The City of his search.
He hastening to the gate
Roams o’er the city with insatiate eyes,
Its thousand dwellings o’er whose level roofs
Fair cupolas appeared, and high-domed mosques
And pointed minarets, and cypress groves
Every where scattered[87] in unwithering green.
Thou too art fallen, Bagdad! City of[88] Peace,
Thou too hast had thy day!
And loathsome Ignorance and brute Servitude
Pollute thy dwellings now,
Erst for the Mighty and the Wise renowned.
O yet illustrious for remembered fame,
Thy founder the [89]Victorious, and the pomp
Of Haroun, for whose name by blood defiled,
Jahia’s, and the blameless Barmecides’,
Genius hath wrought salvation; and the years
When Science with the good Al-Maimon dwelt;
So one day may the Crescent from thy Mosques
Be plucked by Wisdom, when the enlightened arm
Of Europe conquers to redeem the East.
Then Pomp and Pleasure dwelt within her walls
The Merchants of the East and of the West
Met in her arched[90] Bazars;
All day the active poor
Showered a cool comfort o’er her thronging streets;
Labour was busy in her looms;
Thro’ all her open gates
Long troops of laden Camels lined her roads,
And Tigris on his tameless[91] current bore
Armenian harvests to her multitudes.
But not in sumptuous Caravansary
The adventurer idles there,
Nor satiates wonder with her pomp and wealth;
A long day’s distance from the walls
Stands ruined Babylon!
The time of action is at hand,
The hope that for so many a year
Hath been his daily thought, his nightly dream,
Stings to more restlessness.
He loathes all lingering that delays the hour
When, full of glory, from his quest returned,
He on the pillar of the Tent beloved
Shall hang Hodeirah’s sword.
The many-coloured[92] domes
Yet wore one dusky hue,
The Cranes upon the Mosque
Kept their night-clatter[93] still,
When thro’ the gate the early Traveller past.
And when at evening o’er the swampy plain
The Bittern’s[94] Boom came far,
Distinct in darkness seen
Above the low horizon’s lingering light
Rose the near ruins of old Babylon.
Once from her lofty walls[95] the Charioteer
Looked down on swarming myriads; once she flung
Her arches o’er Euphrates conquered tide,
And thro’ her brazen portals when she poured
Her armies forth, the distant nations looked
As men who watched the thunder-cloud in fear
Lest it should burst above them. She was fallen,
The Queen of Cities, Babylon was fallen!
Low lay her bulwarks; the black scorpion basked
In the palace courts, within her sanctuary
The She Wolf hid her whelps.
Is yonder huge and shapeless heap, what once
Had been the aerial[96] Gardens, height on height
Rising like Medias mountains crowned with wood,
Work of imperial dotage? where the fame
Of[97] Belus? where the Golden Image now,
Which at the sound of dulcimer and lute,
Cornet and sackbut, harp and psaltery,
The Assyrian slaves adored?
A labyrinth of ruins, Babylon
Spreads o’er the blasted plain:
The wandering Arab never sets his tent
Within her walls; the Shepherd[98] eyes afar
Her evil Towers, and devious drives his flock.
Alone unchanged, a free and bridgeless tide
Euphrates rolls along,
Eternal Nature’s work.