Classic Poem

In the eleventh year of the reign of Aurungzebe, Abdalla, King of the
Lesser Bucharia, a lineal descendant from the Great Zingis, having
abdicated the throne in favor of his son, set out on a pilgrimage to the
Shrine of the Prophet; and, passing into India through the delightful
valley of Cashmere, rested for a short time at Delhi on his way. He was
entertained by Aurungzebe in a style of magnificent hospitality, worthy
alike of the visitor and the host, and was afterwards escorted with the
same splendor to Surat, where he embarked for Arabia. During the stay
of the Royal Pilgrim at Delhi, a marriage was agreed upon between the
Prince, his son, and the youngest daughter of the Emperor, LALLA ROOKH;
--a Princess described by the poets of her time as more beautiful than
Leila,Shirine, Dewildé, or any of those heroines whose names
and loves embellish the songs of Persia and Hindostan. It was intended
that the nuptials should be celebrated at Cashmere; where the young King,
as soon as the cares of the empire would permit, was to meet, for the
first time, his lovely bride, and, after a few months' repose in that
enchanting valley, conduct her over the snowy hills into Bucharia.

The day of LALLA ROOKH'S departure from Delhi was as splendid as sunshine
and pageantry could make it. The bazaars and baths were all covered with
the richest tapestry; hundreds of gilded barges upon the Jumna floated
with their banners shining in the water; while through the streets groups
of beautiful children went strewing the most delicious flowers around, as
in that Persian festival called the Scattering of the Roses; till
every part of the city was as fragrant as if a caravan of musk from Khoten
had passed through it. The Princess, having taken leave of her kind
father, who at parting hung a cornelian of Yemen round her neck, on which
was inscribed a verse from the Koran, and having sent a considerable
present to the Fakirs, who kept up the Perpetual Lamp in her sister's
tomb, meekly ascended the palankeen prepared for her; and while Aurungzebe
stood to take a last look from his balcony, the procession moved slowly on
the road to Lahore.

Seldom had the Eastern world seen a cavalcade so superb. From the gardens
in the suburbs to the Imperial palace, it was one unbroken line of
splendor. The gallant appearance of the Rajahs and Mogul lords,
distinguished by those insignia of the Emperor's favor, the feathers
of the egret of Cashmere in their turbans, and the small silver-rimm'd
kettle-drums at the bows of their saddles;--the costly armor of their
cavaliers, who vied, on this occasion, with the guards of the great Keder
Khan, in the brightness of their silver battle-axes and the massiness
of their maces of gold;--the glittering of the gilt pine-apple on the
tops of the palankeens;--the embroidered trappings of the elephants,
bearing on their backs small turrets, in the shape of little antique
temples, within which the Ladies of LALLA ROOKH lay as it were enshrined;
--the rose-colored veils of the Princess's own sumptuous litter, at
the front of which a fair young female slave sat fanning her through the
curtains, with feathers of the Argus pheasant's wing;--and the lovely
troop of Tartarian and Cashmerian maids of honor, whom the young King had
sent to accompany his bride, and who rode on each side of the litter, upon
small Arabian horses;--all was brilliant, tasteful, and magnificent, and
pleased even the critical and fastidious FADLADEEN, Great Nazir or
Chamberlain of the Haram, who was borne in his palankeen immediately after
the Princess, and considered himself not the least important personage of
the pageant.

FADLADEEN was a judge of everything,--from the pencilling of a
Circassian's eyelids to the deepest questions of science and literature;
from the mixture of a conserve of rose-leaves to the composition of an
epic poem: and such influence had his opinion upon the various tastes of
the day, that all the cooks and poets of Delhi stood in awe of him. His
political conduct and opinions were founded upon that line of Sadi,--
"Should the Prince at noon-day say, It is night, declare that you behold
the moon and stars."--And his zeal for religion, of which Aurungzebe was a
munificent protector, was about as disinterested as that of the
goldsmith who fell in love with the diamond eyes of the idol of
Jaghernaut.

During the first days of their journey, LALLA ROOKH, who had passed all
her life within the shadow of the Royal Gardens of Delhi, found
enough in the beauty of the scenery through which they passed to interest
her mind, and delight her imagination; and when at evening or in the heat
of the day they turned off from the high road to those retired and
romantic places which had been selected for her encampments,--sometimes,
on the banks of a small rivulet, as clear as the waters of the Lake of
Pearl; sometimes under the sacred shade of a Banyan tree, from which
the view opened upon a glade covered with antelopes; and often in those
hidden, embowered spots, described by one from the Isles of the West,
as "places of melancholy, delight, and safety, where all the company
around was wild peacocks and turtle-doves;"--she felt a charm in these
scenes, so lovely and so new to her, which, for a time, made her
indifferent to every other amusement. But LALLA ROOKH was young, and the
young love variety; nor could the conversation of her Ladies and the Great
Chamberlain, FADLADEEN,(the only persons, of course, admitted to her
pavilion.) sufficiently enliven those many vacant hours, which were
devoted neither to the pillow nor the palankeen. There was a little
Persian slave who sung sweetly to the Vina, and who, now and then, lulled
the Princess to sleep with the ancient ditties of her country, about the
loves of Wavnak and Ezra, the fair-haired Zal and his mistress
Rodahver, not forgetting the combat of Rustam with the terrible White
Demon. At other times she was amused by those graceful dancing-girls
of Delhi, who had been permitted by the Bramins of the Great Pagoda to
attend her, much to the horror of the good Mussulman FADLADEEN, who could
see nothing graceful or agreeable in idolaters, and to whom the very
tinkling of their golden anklets was an abomination.

But these and many other diversions were repeated till they lost all their
charm, and the nights and noon-days were beginning to move heavily, when,
at length, it was recollected that, among the attendants sent by the
bridegroom, was a young poet of Cashmere, much celebrated throughout the
Valley for his manner of reciting the Stories of the East, on whom his
Royal Master had conferred the privilege of being admitted to the pavilion
of the Princess, that he might help to beguile the tediousness of the
journey by some of his most agreeable recitals. At the mention of a poet,
FADLADEEN elevated his critical eyebrows, and, having refreshed his
faculties with a dose of that delicious opium which is distilled from the
black poppy of the Thebais, gave orders for the minstrel to be forthwith
introduced into the presence.

The Princess, who had once in her life seen a poet from behind the screens
of gauze in her father's hall, and had conceived from that specimen no
very favorable ideas of the Caste, expected but little in this new
exhibition to interest her;--she felt inclined, however, to alter her
opinion on the very first appearance of FERAMORZ. He was a youth about
LALLA ROOKH'S own age, and graceful as that idol of women,
Crishna,--such as he appears to their young imaginations, heroic,
beautiful, breathing music from his very eyes, and exalting the religion
of his worshippers into love. His dress was simple, yet not without some
marks of costliness; and the Ladies of the Princess were not long in
discovering that the cloth, which encircled his high Tartarian cap, was of
the most delicate kind that the shawl-goats of Tibet supply. Here and
there, too, over his vest, which was confined by a flowered girdle of
Kashan, hung strings of fine pearl, disposed with an air of studied
negligence;--nor did the exquisite embroidery of his sandals escape the
observation of these fair critics; who, however they might give way to
FADLADEEN upon the unimportant topics of religion and government, had the
spirit of martyrs in everything relating to such momentous matters as
jewels and embroidery.

For the purpose of relieving the pauses of recitation by music, the young
Cashmerian held in his hand a kitar;--such as, in old times, the Arab
maids of the West used to listen to by moonlight in the gardens of the
Alhambra--and, having premised, with much humility, that the story he was
about to relate was founded on the adventures of that Veiled Prophet of
Khorassan, who, in the year of the Hegira 163, created such alarm
throughout the Eastern Empire, made an obeisance to the Princess, and thus
began:--


THE VEILED PROPHET OF KHORASSAN.


In that delightful Province of the Sun,
The first of Persian lands he shines upon.
Where all the loveliest children of his beam,
Flowerets and fruits, blush over every stream,
And, fairest of all streams, the MURGA roves
Among MEROU'S bright palaces and groves;--
There on that throne, to which the blind belief
Of millions raised him, sat the Prophet-Chief,
The Great MOKANNA. O'er his features hung
The Veil, the Silver Veil, which he had flung
In mercy there, to hide from mortal sight
His dazzling brow, till man could bear its light.
For, far less luminous, his votaries said,
Were even the gleams, miraculously shed
O'er MOUSSA'S cheek, when down the Mount he trod
All glowing from the presence of his God!

On either side, with ready hearts and hands,
His chosen guard of bold Believers stands;
Young fire-eyed disputants, who deem their swords,
On points of faith, more eloquent than words;

And such their zeal, there's not a youth with brand
Uplifted there, but at the Chief's command,
Would make his own devoted heart its sheath,
And bless the lips that doomed so dear a death!
In hatred to the Caliph's hue of night,
Their vesture, helms and all, is snowy white;
Their weapons various--some equipt for speed,
With javelins of the light Kathaian reed;
Or bows of buffalo horn and shining quivers
Filled with the stems
that bloom on IRAN'S rivers;
While some, for war's more terrible attacks,
Wield the huge mace and ponderous battle-axe;
And as they wave aloft in morning's beam
The milk-white plumage of their helms, they seem
Like a chenar-tree grove when winter throws
O'er all its tufted heads his feathery snows.

Between the porphyry pillars that uphold
The rich moresque-work of the roof of gold,
Aloft the Haram's curtained galleries rise,
Where thro' the silken net-work, glancing eyes,
From time to time, like sudden gleams that glow
Thro' autumn clouds, shine o'er the pomp below.--
What impious tongue, ye blushing saints, would dare
To hint that aught but Heaven hath placed you there?
Or that the loves of this light world could bind,
In their gross chain, your Prophet's soaring mind?
No--wrongful thought!--commissioned from above
To people Eden's bowers with shapes of love,
(Creatures so bright, that the same lips and eyes
They wear on earth will serve in Paradise,)
There to recline among Heaven's native maids,
And crown the Elect with bliss that never fades--
Well hath the Prophet-Chief his bidding done;
And every beauteous race beneath the sun,
From those who kneel at BRAHMA'S burning fount,
To the fresh nymphs bounding o'er YEMEN'S mounts;
From PERSIA'S eyes of full and fawnlike ray,
To the small, half-shut glances of KATHAY;
And GEORGIA'S bloom, and AZAB'S darker smiles,
And the gold ringlets of the Western Isles;
All, all are there;--each Land its flower hath given,
To form that fair young Nursery for Heaven!

But why this pageant now? this armed array?
What triumph crowds the rich Divan to-day
With turbaned heads of every hue and race,
Bowing before that veiled and awful face,
Like tulip-beds, of different shape and dyes,
Bending beneath the invisible West-wind's sighs!
What new-made mystery now for Faith to sign
And blood to seal, as genuine and divine,
What dazzling mimicry of God's own power
Hath the bold Prophet planned to grace this hour?

Not such the pageant now, tho' not less proud;
Yon warrior youth advancing from the crowd
With silver bow, with belt of broidered crape
And fur-bound bonnet of Bucharian shape.
So fiercely beautiful in form and eye,
Like war's wild planet in a summer sky;
That youth to-day,--a proselyte, worth hordes
Of cooler spirits and less practised swords,--
Is come to join, all bravery and belief,
The creed and standard of the heaven-sent Chief.

Tho' few his years, the West already knows
Young AZIM'S fame;--beyond the Olympian snows
Ere manhood darkened o'er his downy cheek,
O'erwhelmed in fight and captive to the Greek,
He lingered there, till peace dissolved his chains;--
Oh! who could even in bondage tread the plains
Of glorious GREECE nor feel his spirit rise
Kindling within him? who with heart and eyes
Could walk where Liberty had been nor see
The shining foot-prints of her Deity,
Nor feel those god-like breathings in the air
Which mutely told her spirit had been there?
Not he, that youthful warrior,--no, too well
For his soul's quiet worked the awakening spell;
And now, returning to his own dear land,
Full of those dreams of good that, vainly grand,
Haunt the young heart,--proud views of human-kind,
Of men to Gods exalted and refined,--
False views like that horizon's fair deceit
Where earth and heaven but seem, alas, to meet!--
Soon as he heard an Arm Divine was raised
To right the nations, and beheld, emblazed
On the white flag MOKANNA'S host unfurled,
Those words of sunshine, "Freedom to the World,"
At once his faith, his sword, his soul obeyed
The inspiring summons; every chosen blade
That fought beneath that banner's sacred text
Seemed doubly edged for this world and the next;
And ne'er did Faith with her smooth bandage bind
Eyes more devoutly willing to be blind,
In virtue's cause;--never was soul inspired
With livelier trust in what it most desired,
Than his, the enthusiast there, who kneeling, pale
With pious awe before that Silver Veil,
Believes the form to which he bends his knee
Some pure, redeeming angel sent to free
This fettered world from every bond and stain,
And bring its primal glories back again!

Low as young AZIM knelt, that motley crowd
Of all earth's nations sunk the knee and bowed,
With shouts of "ALLA!" echoing long and loud;
Which high in air, above the Prophet's head,
Hundreds of banners to the sunbeam spread
Waved, like the wings of the white birds that fan
The flying throne of star-taught SOLIMAN.
Then thus he spoke:-"Stranger, tho' new the frame
"Thy soul inhabits now. I've trackt its flame
"For many an age, in every chance and change
"Of that existence, thro' whose varied range,--
"As thro' a torch-race where from hand to hand
"The flying youths transmit their shining brand,
"From frame to frame the unextinguisht soul
"Rapidly passes till it reach the goal!

"Nor think 'tis only the gross Spirits warmed
"With duskier fire and for earth's medium formed
"That run this course;--Beings the most divine
"Thus deign thro' dark mortality to shine.
"Such was the Essence that in ADAM dwelt,
"To which all Heaven except the Proud One knelt:
"Such the refined Intelligence that glowed
"In MOUSSA'S frame,--and thence descending flowed
"Thro' many a Prophet's breast;--in ISSA shone
"And in MOHAMMED burned; till hastening on.
"(As a bright river that from fall to fall
"In many a maze descending bright thro' all,
"Finds some fair region where, each labyrinth past,
"In one full lake of light it rests at last)
"That Holy Spirit settling calm and free
"From lapse or shadow centres all in me!

Again throughout the assembly at these words
Thousands of voices rung: the warrior's swords
Were pointed up at heaven; a sudden wind
In the open banners played, and from behind
Those Persian hangings that but ill could screen
The Harem's loveliness, white hands were seen
Waving embroid