Go, child of pity: watch the sullen glare
That lights the haggard features of despair,
As upon dying guilt's distracted sight
Rise the black clouds of everlasting night;
Drink in the fever'd eyeball's dismal ray,
And gaze again—and turn not yet away,
Drink in its anguish, till thy heart and eye
Reel with the draught of that sad lethargy;
Till Gloom with chilling fears thy soul congeal,
And on thy bosom stamp her leaden seal,
Till Melancholy flaps her heavy wings
Above thy fancy's light imaginings,
And Sorrow wraps thee in her sable shroud,
And Terror in a gathering thunder-cloud!

Go, call up Darkness from his dread abode,
Bid Desolation fling her curse abroad
—Then gaze around on Nature!—ah, how dear,
How widow like she sits in sadness here:
Lost are the glowing tints, the softening shades,
Her sunny meadows and her greenwood glades;
No grateful flow'r hath gemm'd its mother earth,
Rejoicing in the blessedness of birth:
No blithesome lark has waked the drowsy day,
No sorrowing dews have wept themselves away;
Faded—the smiles that dimpled in her vales;
Scatter'd, the fragrance of the spicy gales
That dew'd her locks with odours, as they swept
The waving groves, or in the rose-bud slept!

Is this the desert? this the blighted plain
Where Silence holds her melancholy reign—
Where foot of daring mortal scarce hath trod,
But all around is solitude—and God;
And where the sandy billows overwhelm
All but young Fancy's visionary realm,
In which, beneath the red moon's sickly glance,
Fantastic forms prolong the midnight dance,
And pigmy warriors, marshall'd on the plains,
Shout high defiance to the invading cranes?
Regions of sorrow—darkly have ye frown'd
Amidst a sunny world of smiles around;
Luxurious Persia, bower'd in rosy bloom,
Breathes the sweet air of Araby's perfume,
And where Italian suns in glory shine
To the green olive clings the tendrill'd vine;
In yon soft bosom of Iberia's vales
The orange-blossom scents the lingering gales,
That waft its sweets to where Madeira's plain
With emerald beauty gems the western main:
The winds that o'er the rough Ægean sweep,
Tamed into zephyrs, on its islands sleep,
And where rich Delta drinks the swelling Nile,
Auspicious Ceres spreads her golden smile.
But on Sahara death has set his throne,
And reigns in sullen majesty alone:
Unfurl'd on high above the desert-king
The red simoon spreads forth its fiery wing;
The spirits of the storm his bidding wait,
Gigantic shadows swell his awful state,
And circling furies hover round his head,
To crown with flames the tyrant of the dead!
The desert shrank beneath him, as he passed,
Borne on the burning pinions of the blast;
He breathed—and solitude sat pining there;
He spake—and silence hush'd the listening air;
He frowned—and blighted nature scarce could
The lightning glances of her monarch's eye,
But where he look'd in withering fury down
A dying desert knit its giant frown!

Desolate wilds, creation's barren grave,
Where dull as Lethe rolls the desert wave,
How sparingly with warm existence rife
Have ye rejoiced in love, or teem'd with life!
Can it then be in solitudes so drear,
That utter nothing has its dwelling here?—
Hence—tho't of darkness!—o'er the sandy flood
Broods the great spirit of a present God:
He is, where other being may not be;
Space cannot bind Him—nor infinity!
Deeper than thought has ever dared to stray,
Higher than fancy wing'd her wondering way,
Beyond the beaming of the furthest star,
Beyond the pilgrim-comet's distant car,
Beyond all worlds, and glorious suns unseen,
H E is, and will be, and has ever been!
Nor less—where the huge iceberg lifts its head,
Dim as a dream, from ocean's polar bed;
Or where in softer climes creation glows,
And Paphos blushes from its banks of rose,
Or where fierce suns the panting desert sear—
H E is, and was, and ever will be, HERE !

But would thy daring spirit, child of man,
The secret chambers of the desert scan,
Curtain'd with flames, and tenanted by death,
Fann'd by the tempest of Sirocco's breath?
With crested Azräel shall a mortal strive,
Or breathe the gales of pestilence, and live?
O, then, let Avarice his hand refrain,
Nor tempt the billows of that fiery main,
Let patience, toil, and courage nobly dare
Far other deeds than fruitless labours there,
Let dauntless enterprise, with generous zeal,
Toil, not unlaurell'd, for her fellows' weal,
But be the howling wilderness untrod,
And trackless still, Sahara's barren flood:
Lo, from the streaming east, a blaze of light
Has swept to distant shores astonish'd night,
Darkness has snatch'd his spangled robe away,
And in full glory shines the new-born day;
Rejoice, ye flowery vales—ye verdant isles,
With the glad sunbeams weave your rosy smiles,
The bridegroom of the earth looks down in love,
And blooms in freshened beauty from above;
Ye waiting dews, leap to that warm embrace,
With fragrant incense bathe his blushing face;
Thou earth be robed in joy!—But one sad plain
Exults not, smiles not, to the morn again:
Soon as the sun is all in glory drest
The conscious desert heaves its troubled breast
Like one, aroused to ceaseless misery,
That, ever dying, strives once more—to die.
And can Sahara weep? With sudden blaze
Deep in her bosom pierce the cruel-rays,
But never thence one tributary stream
Shall soar aloft to quench the maddening beam:
Tearless in agony, fixt in grief, alone,
Pines the sad daughter of the torrid zone,
A rocky monument of anguish deep,
The Niobe of Nature cannot weep!
Yet from her bosom steams the sandy cloud,
And heavily waves above;—a lurid shroud,
Dense as the wing of sorrow, flapping o'er
The wither'd heart, that may not blossom more.

Faint o'er that burning desert, faint and slow,
Failing of limb, and pale with looks of wo,
Parch'd by the hot Siróc, and fiery ray,
The wearied kaffè winds its toilsome way,
'Tis long, long since the panther bounded by,
And howl'd and gazed upon them wistfully;
Long since the monarch lion from his lair
Arose, and thunder'd to the stagnant air:
No wandering ostrich with extended wing
Flaps o'er the sands, to seek the distant spring;
Bounding from rock to rock, with curious scan
No wild gazelle surveys the stranger, man;
Nor does the famish'd tiger's lengthening roar
Speak to the winds and wake the echoes more.

But o'er these realms of sorrow, drear and vast,
In hollow dirges moans the desert blast,
Or breathing o'er the plain in smothered wrath,
Howls to the skulls that whiten on the path.
And as with heavy tramp they toil along,
Is heard no more the cheering Arab song—
No more the wild Bedouin's joyous shriek
With startling homage greets his wandering sheik,
Only the muttered curse, or whisper'd pray'r,
Or deep death-rattle wakes the sluggish air.

Behold one here, who till to-day has been
A father, and with bursting bosom seen
His last, his cherished one, whose waning eye
Smiled only resignation, droop and die!
Parch'd by the heat, those lips are curl'd and pale,
As rose-leaves withered in the northern gale;
Her eye no more its silent love shall speak,
No flush of life shall mantle on her cheek:
Yet with a phrensied fondness to his child
The father clung, and thought his darling smiled;
Ah, yes! 'tis death that o'er her beauty throws
That marble smile of deep and dread repose.
What thrilling shouts are these that rend the sky,
Whence is the joy that lights the sunken eye?
On, on, they speed their burning thirst to slake
In the blue waters of yon rippled lake—
Or must they still those maddening pangs assuage
In the sand-billows of the false mirage?
Lo the fair phantom, melting to the wind,
Leaves but the sting of baffled bliss behind.

Hope smiles again as with instinctive haste,
The panting camels rush along the waste,
And snuff the grateful breeze, that sweeping by
Wafts its cool fragrance through the cloudless sky,
Swift as the steed that feels the slacken'd rein,
And flies impetuous o'er the sounding plain,
Eager as bursting from an Alpine source
The winter torrent in its headlong course,
Still hasting on, the wearied band behold
—The green oase, an emerald couch'd in gold!
And now the curving rivulet they descry,
That bow of hope upon a stormy sky,
Now ranging its luxuriant banks of green
In silent rapture gaze upon the scene:
His graceful arms the palm was waving there
Caught in the tall acacia's tangled hair,
While in festoons across his branches slung
The gay kossóm its scarlet tassels hung;
The flowering colocynth had studded round
Jewels of promise o'er the joyful ground,
And where the smile of day burst on the stream,
The trembling waters glitter'd in the beam.