Chinese and Arabian Literature - E. Wilson - The Search For Mecca

SELECTIONS FROM ARABIAN POETRY 67
Destin'd now to keener woes,
I must see the youth depart,
He must go, and as he goes
Rend at once my bursting heart.
Slumber may desert my bed,
'Tis not slumber's charms I seek
'.Tis the robe of beauty spread
O'er my Selim's rosy cheek.
TO A LADY WEEPING"
When I beheld thy blue eyes shine
Thro' the bright drop that pity drew,
I saw beneath those tears of thine
A blue-ey'd violet bath'd in dew.
The violet ever scents the gale,
Its hues adorn the fairest wreath,
But sweetest thro' a dewy veil
Its colors glow, its odors breathe.
— —
And thus thy charms in brightness rise
When wit and pleasure round thee play,
When mirth sits smiling in thine eyes,
Who but admires their sprightly ray?
But when thro' pity's flood they gleam,
Who but must love their soften'd beam ?
Ebn Alrumi.
ON A VALETUDINARIAN
So careful is Isa, and anxious to last,
So afraid of himself is he grown,
He swears thro' two nostrils the breath goes too fast.
And he's trying to breathe thro' but one.
Ehn Alrumi.
" Ebn Alrumi is reckoned by the birth a Syrian, and passed the greatest
Arabian writers as one of the most ex- part of his time at Emessa, where he
cellent of aQ their poets. He was by died a.h. 283.