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(From Ruins of Many Lands)
PERSIA! time-honored land! who looks on thee | |
| A desert, yet a Paradise, will see, | |
| Vast chains of hills where not a shrub appears, | |
| Wastes where no dews distil their diamond tears, | |
| The only living things foul birds of prey, | 5 |
| Who whet their beaks, or court the solar ray, | |
| And wolves that fill with howlings midnight’s vale, | |
| Turning the cheek of far-off traveller pale;— | |
| Anon, the ravished eye delighted dwells | |
| On chinar-groves and brightly watered dells; | 10 |
| Blooming where man and art have nothing done, | |
| Pomegranates hang their rich fruit in the sun; | |
| Grapes turn to purple many a rock’s tall brow, | |
| And globes of gold adorn the citron’s bough; | |
| Mid rose-trees hid, or perched on some high palm, | 15 |
| The bulbul sings through eve’s delicious calm; | |
| While girt by planes, or washed by cooling streams, | |
| On some green flat the stately city gleams.— | |
| T is as a demon there had cast his frown, | |
| And here an angel breathed a blessing down; | 20 |
| As if in nature as the human soul, | |
| The god of darkness spurned heaven’s bright control, | |
| Good struggling hard with Evil’s withering spell, | |
| A smiling Eden on the marge of hell. | |
| Immortal clime! where Zoroaster sprung, | 25 |
| And light on Persia’s earlier history flung; | |
| Let charity condemn not Iran’s sage, | |
| Who taught, reformed, and humanized his age. | |
| In him one great as Mecca’s prophet see, | |
| But oh, more gentle, wise, and pure than he. | 30 |
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