Classic Poem

TALE OF THE MOORISH BARD .

The earliest beauty of the rose,
Waking from moonlight repose,
In morning air and dew to steep
The blush of her voluptuous sleep;
This was her cheek: and for her eye,
Gaze thou upon the midnight sky,
And choose its fairest star, the one
Thou deem'st most lovely and most lone:
Her lip, oh! never flower of spring
Had smile of such sweet blandishing.

Ay, beautiful she was as light
Descending on the darken'd sight;
But these were not the spells that gave
L EILA the heart for her charmed slave;
But all those sweetest gifts that win,
Like sunshine, instant entrance in;
Those gentle words and acts that bind
In love our nature with our kind.

She dwelt within a palace fair,
Such as in fairy gardens are;
There grew her father's cypress tree,
No other monument had he.
He bade that never funeral stone
Should tell of glory overthrown, —
What could it say, but foreign sky
Had seen the exile pine and die?

The maiden grew beside the tomb;
Perhaps 'twas that which touch'd her bloom
With somewhat of more mournful shade
Than seems for youth's first budding made.
It was her favourite haunt, she felt
As there her all of memory dwelt.
Alone, a stranger in the land
Which was her home, the only band
Between her and her native tongue
Was when her native songs she sung.

L EILA , thou wert not of our name;
Thy Christian creed, thy Spanish race,
To us were sorrow, guilt, and shame,
No earthly beauty might efface.
Yet, lovely Infidel, thou art
A treasure clinging to my heart:
A very boy, I yet recal
The dark light of thine eye's charm'd thrall;
Beneath thy worshipp'd cypress leant,
And flowers with thy breathing blent,
Less pure, less beautiful than thou,
I see thee; and I hear thee now
Singing sweet to the twilight dim —
Could it be sin? — thy vesper-hymn.

Burnt a sweet light in that fair shrine,
At once too earthly, too divine;
The heart's vain struggle to create
An Eden not for mortal state.

Love, who shall say that thou art not
The dearest blessing of our lot?
Yet, not the less, who may deny
Life has no sorrow like thy sigh?
A fairy gift, and none may know
Or will it work to weal or woe.

Spite of the differing race and creed,
Their fathers had been friends in need;
And, all unconsciously at first,
Love in its infancy was nurst;
Companions from their earliest years,
Unknown the hopes, the doubts, the fears,
That haunt young passion's early hour,
Spared but to come with deadlier power,
With deeper sorrow, worse unrest,
When once love stood in both confest.

The ground she trod, the air she breathed,
The blossoms in her dark hair wreathed,
Her smile, her voice, to M IRZA'S eyes
More precious seem'd than Paradise.

Yet was the silence sweet unbroken
By vows in which young love is spoken.
But when the heart has but one dream
For midnight gloom or noontide beam,
And one, at least, knows well what power
Is ruling, words will find their hour;
Though after-growth of grief and pain,
May wish those words unsaid again.

'Twas sunset, and the glorious heaven
To L EILA'S cheek and eye seem'd given;
The one like evening crimson bright,
The other fill'd with such clear light,
That, as she benTher o'er the strings,
Catching music's wanderings,
Look'd she well some Peri fair,
Born and being of the air.
Waked the guitar beneath her hand
To ballad of her Spanish land;
Sad, but yet suiting twilight pale,
When surely tenderest thoughts prevail.