It is thine own voice echoing to thee now,

And thou didst pray to hear it

I must unto my work and my stern hours!

Take from my room thy harp, and books and flowers!

And in his room again he sat alone.

A year

His frame had lost its fulness in that time;
His manly features had grown sharp and thin,
And from his lips the constant smile had faded.
Wild fires had burned the languor from his eye:
The lids looked fevered, and the brow was bent
With an habitual frown. He was much changed.
His chin was resting on his clenched hand,
And with his foot he beat upon the floor

Unconsciously the time of a sad tune.

Thoughts of the past preyed on him bitterly.
He had won power and held it. He had walked
Steadily upward in the eye of Fame,

And kept his truth unsullied-but his home

Had been invaded by envenomed tongues;

His wife-his spotless wife-had been assailed
By slander, and his child had grown afraid
To come to him-his manner was so stern.

He could not speak beside his own hearth freely.
His friends were half estranged, and vulgar men
Presumed upon their services and grew

Familiar with him. He'd small time to sleep,
And none to pray; and, with his heart in fetters,
He bore deep insults silently, and bowed
Respectfully to men who knew he loathed them!
And when his heart was eloquent with truth,
And love of country and an honest zeal
Burned for expression, he could find no words
They would not misinterpret with their lies.
What were his many honours to him now?
The good half doubted, falsehood was so strong-
His home was hateful with its cautious fears-
His wife lay trembling on his very breast
Frighted with calumny !—And this is FAME.

THE SCHOLAR OF THEBET BEN KHORAT.*

"Influentia cœli morbum hune movet, interdum omnibus aliis amotis." MELANCTHON DE ANIMA, CAP. DE HUMORIBUS.

NIGHT in Arabia. An hour ago,

Pale Dian had descended from the sky,
Flinging her cestus out upon the sea,

And at their watches now the solemn stars
Stood vigilant and lone; and, dead asleep,

* A famous Arabian astrologer, who is said to have spent forty years in discovering the motion of the eighth sphere. He had a scholar, a young Bedouin Arab, who, with a singular passion for knowledge, abandoned his wandering tribe, and, applying himself too closely to astrology, lost his reason, and died.

THE SCHOLAR OF THEBET BEN KHORAT.

115

With not a shadow moving on its breast,
The breathing earth lay in its silver dew,
And, trembling on their myriad viewless wings,
Th' imprisoned odours 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 for ever 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 coloured stars*

"Even to the naked eye, the stars appear of palpably different colours; 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 colour must be supposed to arise from their different powers to absorb and reflect the rays of the

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

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."

* This star exhibits a peculiar quality—a rapid and beautiful change in the colour of its light; every alternate twinkling being of an intense reddish crimson colour, 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.