Truth would appear in her own sweet guise, Beauteous, gentle, and close at hand. ----- Why these inquiries make,

Where charity may flow? 
Cast in the flood thy cake,—­

Its eater, who will know?
-----
Once when I a spider had kill’d,

Then methought:  wast right or wrong?

That we both to these times should belong, This had God in His goodness willed. ----- Motley this congregation is, for, lo!  At the communion kneel both friend and foe. ----- If the country I’m to show, Thou must on the housetop go. ----- A man with households twain

Ne’er finds attention meet,
A house wherein two women reign

Is ne’er kept clean and neat.
-----
Bless, thou dread Creator,

Bless this humble fane;
Man may build them greater,—­

More they’ll not contain.
-----
Let this house’s glory rise,

Handed to far ages down,

And the son his honour prize. 
As the father his renown.
-----
O’er the Mediterranean sea

Proudly hath the Orient sprung;
Who loves Hafis and knows him, he

Knows what Caldron hath sung.
-----
If the ass that bore the Saviour

Were to Mecca driven, he

Would not alter, but would be
Still an ass in his behavior.
-----
The flood of passion storms with fruitless strife

’Gainst the unvanquished solid land.—­

It throws poetic pearls upon the strand, And thus is gain’d the prize of life. ----- When so many minstrels there are,

How it pains me, alas, to know it! 
Who from the earth drives poetry far?

Who but the poet!
-----
VII.   Timur name.

BOOK OF TIMUR.

The winter and Timur.

So the winter now closed round them
With resistless fury.  Scattering
Over all his breath so icy,
He inflamed each wind that blithe
To assail them angrily. 
Over them he gave dominion
To his frost-unsharpened tempests;
Down to Timur’s council went he,
And with threat’ning voice address’d him:—­
“Softly, slowly, wretched being! 
Live, the tyrant of injustice;
But shall hearts be scorch’d much longer
By thy flames,—­consume before them? 
If amongst the evil spirits
Thou art one,—­good!  I’m another. 
Thou a greybeard art—­so I am;
Land and men we make to stiffen. 
Thou art Mars!  And I Saturnus,—­
Both are evil-working planets,
When united, horror-fraught. 
Thou dost kill the soul, thou freezes
E’en the atmosphere; still colder
Is my breath than thine was ever. 
Thy wild armies vex the faithful
With a thousand varying torments;
Well!  God grant that I discover
Even worse, before I perish! 
And by God, I’ll give thee none. 
Let God hear what now I tell thee! 
Yes, by God! from Death’s cold clutches
Nought, O greybeard, shall protect thee,
Not the hearth’s broad coalfire’s ardour,
Not December’s brightest flame.”