“There was neither life nor herbage, not a drop of water lay,
  All along the arid valley where thou seest this well to-day.

  “Sixty years have wrought their changes since a man of wealth
    and pride,
  With his servants and his camels, here, amidst his riches, died.

  “As we journeyed o’er the Desert, dead beneath the blazing sky,
  Here I saw them, beasts and masters, in a common burial lie;

  “Thirty men and eighty camels did the shrouding sand infold;
  And we gathered up their treasure, spices, precious stones, and gold;

  “Then we heaped the sand above them, and, beneath the burning sun,
  With a friendly care we finished what the winds had well begun.

  “Still I hold that master’s treasure, and his record, and his name;
  Long I waited for his kindred, but no kindred ever came.

  “Time, who beareth all things onward, hither bore our steps again,
  When around this spot were scattered whitened bones of beasts and men;

  “And from out the heaving hillocks of the mingled sand and mould
  Lo! the little palms were springing, which to-day are great and old.

  “From the shrubs we held the camels; for I felt that life of man,
  Breaking to new forms of being, through that tender herbage ran.

  “In the graves of men and camels long the dates unheeded lay,
  Till their germs of life commanded larger life from that decay;

  “And the falling dews, arrested, nourished every tender shoot,
  While beneath, the hidden moisture gathered to each wandering root.

  “So they grew; and I have watched them, as we journeyed, year by year;
  And we digged this well beneath them, where thou seest it, fresh and
    clear.

  “Thus from waste and loss and sorrow still are joy and beauty born,
  Like the fruitage of these palm-trees and the blossom of the thorn;

  “Life from death, and good from evil!—­from that buried caravan
  Springs the life to save the living, many a weak, despairing man.”

  As he ended, Abdel-Hassan, quivering through his aged frame,
  Asked, in accents slow and broken, “Knowest thou that master’s name?”

  “He was known as Abdel-Hassan, famed for wealth and power and pride;
  But the proud have often fallen, and, as he, the great have died!”

  Then, upon the ground before them, prostrate Abdel-Hassan fell,
  With his aged hands extended, trembling, to the lonely well,—­

  And the sacred soil beneath him cast upon his hoary head,—­
  Named the servants and the camels,—­summoned Haroun from the dead,—­

  Clutched the unconscious palms around him, as if they were living men,—­
  And before him, in their order, rose his buried train again.

  Moved by pity, spake the stranger, bending o’er him in his grief:—­
  “What affects the man of sorrow?  Speak,—­for speaking is relief.”