And, trembling on their myriad viewless wings,
Th' imprisoned odors left the flowers to dream
And stole away upon the yielding air.
Ben Khorat's tower stands shadowy and tall
In Mecca's loneliest street; and ever there,
When night is at the deepest, burns his lamp
As constant as the Cynosure, and forth
From his looped window stretch the brazen tubes,
Pointing forever at the central star

Of that dim nebula just lifting now
Over Mount Arafat. The sky to-night

Is of a clearer blackness than is wont,
And far within its depths the colored stars*

* "Even to the naked eye, the stars appear of palpably different colors; but when viewed with a prismatic glass, they may be very accurately classed into the red, the yellow, the brilliant white, the dull white and the anomalous. This is true also of the planets, which shine by reflected light, and of course the difference of color must be supposed to arise from their different powers to absorb and reflect the rays of the sun. The original composition of the stars, and the different dispersive powers of their different atmospheres, may be supposed to account also for this phenomenon."

Sparkle like gems-capricious Antares*
Flushing and paling in the Southern arch,
And azure Lyra, like a woman's eye,
Burning with soft blue lustre, and away
Over the desert the bright Polar-star,
White as a flashing icicle, and here,
Hung like a lamp above th' Arabian sea,
Mars with his dusky glow, and, fairer yet,
Mild Sirius,† tinct with dewy violet,

Set like a flower upon the breast of Eve;
And in the zenith the sweet Pleiades,
(Alas-that ev'n a star may pass from heaven
And not be miss'd!)—the linked Pleiades
Undimmed are there, though from the sister band
The fairest has gone down, and, South away,
Hirundo with its little company,

* This star exhibits a peculiar quality-a rapid and beautiful change in the color of its light; every alternate twinkling being of an intense reddish crimson color, and the answering one of a brilliant white.

+ When seen with a prismatic glass, Sirius shows a large brush of exceedingly beautiful violet rays.

The Pleiades are vertical in Arabia.

|| An Arabic constellation placed instead of the Piscis Australis, because the swallow arrives in Arabia about the time of the heliacal rising of the Fishes.

And white-browed Vesta, lamping on her path Lonely and planet-calm, and, all through heaven, Articulate almost, they troop to night,

Like unrob'd angels in a prophet's trance.

Ben Khorat knelt before his telescope,*
Gazing with earnest stillness on the stars.
The gray hairs, struggling from his turban folds,
Played with the entering wind upon his cheeks,
And on his breast his venerable beard

With supernatural whiteness loosely fell.

The black flesh swelled about his sandal thongs,
Tight with his painful posture, and his lean
And withered fingers to his knees were clenched,
And the thin lashes of his straining eye

Lay with unwinking closeness to the lens,
Stiffened with tense up-turning. Hour by hour,

Till the stars melted in the flush of

morn, The old astrologer knelt moveless there, Ravished past pain with the bewildering spheres,

* An anachronism, the author is aware. The Telescope was not invented for a century or two after the time of Ben Khorat.

And, hour by hour, with the same patient thought,
Pored his pale scholar on the characters
Of Chaldee writ, or, as his gaze grew dim
With weariness, the dark-eyed Arab laid
His head upon the window and looked forth
Upon the heavens awhile, until the dews
And the soft beauty of the silent night
Cooled his flushed eyelids, and then patiently
He turned unto his constant task again.

The sparry glinting of the Morning Star
Shot through the leaves of a majestic palm
Fringing Mount Arafat, and, as it caught
The eye of the rapt scholar, he arose

And clasped the volume with an eager haste,
And as the glorious planet mounted on,
Melting her way into the upper sky,

He breathlessly gazed on her :

"Star of the silver ray!

Bright as a god, but punctual as a slave

What spirit the eternal canon gave

That bends thee to thy way?

What is the soul that on thine arrowy light
Is walking earth and heaven in pride to-night?

We know when thou wilt soar

Over the mount-thy change, and place, and time

'Tis written in the Chaldee's mystic rhyme
As 'twere a priceless lore!

I knew as much in my Bedouin garb-
Coursing the desert on my flying barb!

How oft amid the tents

Upon Sahara's sands I've walked alone,
Waiting all night for thee, resplendent one!
With what magnificence,

In the last watches, to my thirsting eye,
Thy passionate beauty flushed into the sky!

Oh, God! how flew my soul

Out to thy glory-upward on thy ray-
Panting as thou ascendedst on thy way,
As if thine own control-

This searchless spirit that I cannot find—
Had set its radiant law upon my mind!