Halloa! another prey,
The nimble Antelope!
The Ounce[148] is freed; one spring
And his talons are sheathed in her shoulders,
And his teeth are red in her gore.
There came a sound from the wood,
Like the howl of the winter wind at night
Around a lonely dwelling,
The Ounce whose gums were warm in his prey
He hears the summoning sound.
In vain his master’s voice
No longer dreaded now,
Calls and recalls with threatful tone.
Away to the forest he goes,
For that Old Woman had laid
Her shrivelled finger on her shrivelled lips,
And whistled with a long, long breath,
And that long breath was the sound
Like the howl of the winter wind at night
Around a lonely dwelling.
Mohareb knew her not,
As to the chase he went,
The glance of his proud eye
Passing in scorn o’er age and wretchedness.
She stands in the depth of the wood,
And panting to her feet
Fawning and fearful creeps the charmed ounce.
Well mayst thou fear, and vainly dost thou fawn!
Her form is changed, her visage new,
Her power, her heart the same!
It is Khawla that stands in the wood.
She knew the place where the mandrake grew,
And round the neck of the ounce,
And round the mandrake’s head
She tightens the ends of her cord.
Her ears are closed with wax,
And her prest finger fastens them,
Deaf as the Adder, when with grounded head
And circled form, her avenues of sound
Barred safely, one slant eye
Watches the charmer’s lips
Waste on the wind his[149] baffled witchery.
The spotted ounce so beautiful
Springs forceful from the scourge:
The dying plant all agony,
Feeling its life-strings crack,
Uttered the unimaginable groan
That none can hear and live.
Then from her victim servant Khawla loosed
The precious poison, next with naked hand
She plucked the boughs of the manchineel.
Then of the wormy wax she took,
That from the perforated[150] tree forced out,
Bewrayed its insect-parent’s work within.
In a cavern of the wood she sits
And moulds the wax to human form,
And as her fingers kneaded it,
By magic accents, to the mystic shape
Imparted with the life of Thalaba,
In all its passive powers
Mysterious sympathy.
With the Mandrake and the Manchineel
She builds her pile accurst.
She lays her finger to the pile,
And blue and green, the flesh
Glows with emitted fire,
A fire[151] to kindle that strange fuel meet.
Before the fire she placed the imaged wax,
“There[152] waste away!” the Enchantress cried,
“And with thee waste Hodeirah’s Son!”
Fool! fool! go thaw the everlasting ice,
Whose polar mountains bound the human reign.
Blindly the wicked work
The righteous will of Heaven!
The doomed Destroyer wears Abdaldar’s ring!
Against the danger of his horoscope
Yourselves have shielded him!
And on the sympathizing wax
The unadmitted flames play powerlessly,
As the cold moon-beam on a plain of snow.
“Curse thee! curse thee!” cried the fiendly woman,
“Hast thou yet a spell of safety?”
And in the raging flames
She cast the imaged wax.
It lay amid the flames,
Like Polycarp of old,
When by the glories of the burning stake
O’er vaulted, his grey hairs
Curled, life-like, to the fire
That haloed round his saintly brow.
“Wherefore is this!” cried Khawla, and she stamped
Thrice on the cavern floor,
“Maimuna! Maimuna!”
Thrice on the floor she stamped,
Then to the rocky gateway glanced
Her eager eyes, and Maimuna was there.
“Nay Sister, nay!” quoth she, “Mohareb’s life
“Is linked with Thalaba’s!
“Nay Sister, nay! the plighted oath!
“The common Sacrament!”
“Idiot!” said Khawla, “one must die, or all!
“Faith kept with him were treason to the rest.
“Why lies the wax, like marble, in the fire?
“What powerful amulet
“Protects Hodeirah’s son?”
Cold, marble-cold, the wax
Lay on the raging pile,
Cold in that white intensity of fire.
The Bat that with her hooked and leathery wings
Clung to the cave-roof, loosed her hold,
Death-sickening with the heat;
The Toad who to the darkest nook had crawled
Panted fast with fever pain;
The Viper from her nest came forth
Leading her quickened brood,
Who sportive with the warm delight, rolled out
Their thin curls, tender as the tendril rings,
Ere the green beauty of their brittle youth
Grows brown, and toughens in the summer sun.
Cold, marble-cold, the wax
Lay on the raging pile,
The silver quivering of the element
O’er its pale surface shedding a dim gloss.