--
She swore and the wide charnel echoed "Never, never!"
From that dread hour, entirely, wildly given
To him and--she believed, lost maid!--to heaven;
Her brain, her heart, her passions all inflamed,
How proud she stood, when in full Haram named
The Priestess of the Faith!--how flasht her eyes
With light, alas, that was not of the skies,
When round in trances only less than hers
She saw the Haram kneel, her prostrate worshippers.
Well might MOKANNA think that form alone
Had spells enough to make the world his own:--
Light, lovely limbs to which the spirit's play
Gave motion, airy as the dancing spray,
When from its stem the small bird wings away;
Lips in whose rosy labyrinth when she smiled
The soul was lost, and blushes, swift and wild
As are the momentary meteors sent
Across the uncalm but beauteous firmament.
And then her look--oh! where's the heart so wise
Could unbewildered meet those matchless eyes?
Quick, restless, strange, but exquisite withal,
Like those of angels just before their fall;
Now shadowed with the shames of earth--now crost
By glimpses of the Heaven her heart had lost;
In every glance there broke without control,
The flashes of a bright but troubled soul,
Where sensibility still wildly played
Like lightning round the ruins it had made!
And such was now young ZELICA--so changed
From her who some years since delighted ranged
The almond groves that shade BOKHARA'S tide
All life and bliss with AZIM by her side!
So altered was she now, this festal day,
When, mid the proud Divan's dazzling array,
The vision of that Youth whom she had loved,
Had wept as dead, before her breathed and moved;--
When--bright, she thought, as if from Eden's track
But half-way trodden, he had wandered back
Again to earth, glistening with Eden's light--
Her beauteous AZIM shone before her sight.
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