“Tell me the needful Talisman!”
Thus as he spake, recumbent on the rock
Beyond the black abyss,
Their forms grew visible.
A settled sorrow sate upon their brows,
Sorrow alone, for trace of guilt and shame
No more remained; and gradual as by prayer
The sin was purged away,
Their robe of glory, purified of stain
Resumed the lustre of its native light.
In awe the youth received the answering voice,
“Son of Hodeirah! thou hast proved it here;
“The Talisman is Faith.”
THALABA THE DESTROYER. BOOK VI.
So from the inmost cavern, Thalaba
Retrod the windings of the rock.
Still on the ground the giant limbs
Of Zohak were outstretched;
The spell of sleep had ceased
And his broad eyes were glaring on the youth:
Yet raised he not his arm to bar the way,
Fearful to rouse the snakes
Now lingering o’er their meal.
Oh then, emerging from that dreadful cave,
How grateful did the gale of night
Salute his freshened sense!
How full of lightsome joy,
Thankful to Heaven, he hastens by the verge
Of that bitumen lake,
Whose black and heavy fumes,
Surge heaving after surge,
Rolled like the billowy and tumultuous sea.
The song of many a bird at morn
Aroused him from his rest.
Lo! by his side a courser stood!
More animate of eye,
Of form more faultless never had he seen,
More light of limbs and beautiful in strength,
Among the race whose blood,
Pure and unmingled, from the royal steeds
Of Solomon came down.
The chosen Arab’s eye
Glanced o’er his graceful shape,
His rich caparisons,
His crimson trappings gay.
But when he saw the mouth
Uncurbed, the unbridled neck,
Then flushed his cheek, and leapt his heart,
For sure he deemed that Heaven had sent
The Courser, whom no erring hand should guide.
And lo! the eager Steed
Throws his head and paws the ground,
Impatient of delay!
Then up leapt Thalaba
And away went the self-governed steed.
Far over the plain
Away went the bridleless steed;
With the dew of the morning his fetlocks were wet,
The foam frothed his limbs in the journey of noon,
Nor stayed he till over the westerly heaven
The shadows of evening had spread.
Then on a sheltered bank
The appointed Youth reposed,
And by him laid the docile courser down.
Again in the grey of the morning
Thalaba bounded up,
Over hill, over dale
Away goes the bridleless steed.
Again at eve he stops
Again the Youth descends.
His load discharged, his errand done,
Then bounded the courser away.
Heavy and dark the eve;
The Moon was hid on high,
A dim light only tinged the mist
That crost her in the path of Heaven.
All living sounds had ceased,
Only the flow of waters near was heard,
A low and lulling melody.
Fasting, yet not of want
Percipient, he on that mysterious steed
Had reached his resting place,
For expectation kept his nature up.
The flow of waters now
Awoke a feverish thirst:
Led by the sound, he moved
To seek the grateful wave.
A meteor in the hazy air
Played before his path;
Before him now it rolled
A globe of livid fire;
And now contracted to a steady light,
As when the solitary hermit prunes
His lamp’s long undulating flame:
And now its wavy point
Up-blazing rose, like a young cypress-tree
Swayed by the heavy wind;
Anon to Thalaba it moved,
And wrapped him in its pale innocuous fire:
Now in the darkness drowned
Left him with eyes bedimmed,
And now emerging spread the scene to sight.
Led by the sound, and meteor-flame
Advanced the Arab youth.
Now to the nearest of the many rills
He stoops; ascending steam
Timely repels his hand,
For from its source it sprung, a boiling tide.
A second course with better hap he tries,
The wave intensly cold
Tempts to a copious draught.
There was a virtue in the wave,
His limbs that stiff with toil,
Dragged heavy, from the copious draught received
Lightness and supple strength.
O’erjoyed, and deeming the benignant Power
Who sent the reinless steed,
Had blessed the healing waters to his use
He laid him down to sleep;
Lulled by the soothing and incessant sound,
The flow of many waters, blending oft
With shriller tones and deep low murmurings
That from the fountain caves
In mingled melody
Like faery music, heard at midnight, came.
The sounds that last he heard at night
Awoke his sense at morn.
A scene of wonders lay before his eyes.
In mazy windings o’er the vale
Wandered a thousand streams;
They in their endless flow had channelled deep
The rocky soil o’er which they ran,
Veining its thousand islet stones,
Like clouds that freckle o’er the summer sky,
The blue etherial ocean circling each
And insulating all.
A thousand shapes they wore, those islet stones,
And Nature with her various tints
Varied anew their thousand forms:
For some were green with moss,
Some rich with yellow lichen’s gold,
Or ruddier tinged, or grey, or silver-white,
Or sparkling sparry radiance to the sun.
Here gushed the fountains up,
Alternate light and blackness, like the play
Of sunbeams, on the warrior’s burnished arms.
Yonder the river rolled, whose bed,
Their labyrinthine lingerings o’er
Received the confluent rills.
This was a wild and wonderous scene,
Strange and beautiful, as where
By Oton-tala, like a sea of stars,
The hundred sources of Hoangho burst.
High mountains closed the vale,
Bare rocky mountains, to all living things
Inhospitable, on whose sides no herb
Rooted, no insect fed, no bird awoke
Their echoes, save the Eagle, strong of wing,
A lonely plunderer, that afar
Sought in the vales his prey.
Thither towards those mountains, Thalaba
Advanced, for well he weened that there had Fate
Destined the adventures end.
Up a wide vale winding amid their depths,
A stony vale between receding heights
Of stone, he wound his way.
A cheerless place! the solitary Bee
Whose buzzing was the only sound of life
Flew there on restless wing,
Seeking in vain one blossom, where
to fix.
Still Thalaba holds on,
The winding vale now narrows on his way,
And steeper of ascent
Rightward and leftward rise the rocks,
And now they meet across the vale.
Was it the toil of human hands
That hewed a passage in the rock,
Thro’ whose rude portal-way
The light of heaven was seen?
Rude and low the portal-way,
Beyond the same ascending straits
Went winding up the wilds.
Still a bare, silent, solitary glen,
A fearful silence and a solitude
That made itself be felt.
And steeper now the ascent,
A rugged path, that tired
The straining muscles, toiling slowly up.
At length again a rock
Stretched o’er the narrow vale.
There also was a portal hewn,
But gates of massy iron barred the way,
Huge, solid, heavy-hinged.
There hung a horn beside the gate,
Ivory-tipt and brazen mouthed,
He took the ivory tip,
And thro’ the brazen mouth he breathed;
From rock to rock rebounding rung the blast,
Like a long thunder peal!
The gates of iron, by no human arm
Unfolded, turning on their hinges slow,
Disclosed the passage of the rock.
He entered, and the iron gates
Fell to, and closed him in.
It was a narrow winding way,
Dim lamps suspended from the vault
Lent to the gloom an agitated light.
Winding it pierced the rock,
A long descending path
By gates of iron closed;
There also hung the horn beside
Of ivory tip and brazen mouth,
Again he took the ivory tip
And gave the brazen mouth his voice again.
Not now in thunder spake the horn,
But poured a sweet and thrilling melody:
The gates flew open, and a flood of light
Rushed on his dazzled eyes.
Was it to earthly Eden lost so long,
The youth had found the wonderous way?
But earthly Eden boasts
No terraced palaces,
No rich pavilions bright with woven gold.
Like these that in the vale
Rise amid odorous groves.
The astonished Thalaba
Doubting as tho’ an unsubstantial dream
Beguiled his passive sense,
A moment closed his eyes;
Still they were there... the palaces and groves,
And rich pavilions glittering golden light.
And lo! a man, reverend in comely age
Advancing meets the youth.
“Favoured of Fortune,” he exclaimed,
“Go taste the joys of Paradise!
“The reinless steed that ranges o’er the world
“Brings hither those alone for lofty deeds
“Marked by their horoscope; permitted here
“A foretaste of the full beatitude,
“That in heroic acts they may go on
“More ardent, eager to return and reap
“Endless enjoyment here, their destined meed.
“Favoured of Fortune thou,
“Go taste the joys of Paradise!”
This said, he turned away, and left
The Youth in wonder mute;
For Thalaba stood mute
And passively received
The mingled joy that flowed on every sense.
Where’er his eye could reach
Fair structures, rain bow-hued, arose;
And rich pavilions thro’ the opening woods
Gleamed from their waving curtains sunny gold;
And winding thro’ the verdant vale
Flowed streams of liquid light;
And fluted cypresses reared up
Their living obelisks;
And broad-leaved Zennars in long colonades
O’er-arched delightful walks,
Where round their trunks the thousand-tendril’d vine
Wound up and hung the bows with greener wreaths,
And clusters not their own.
Wearied with endless beauty did his eyes
Return for rest? beside him teems the earth
With tulips, like the ruddy evening streaked,
And here the lily hangs her head of snow,
And here amid her sable cup
Shines the red eye-spot, like one brightest star
The solitary twinkler of the night,
And here the rose expands
Her paradise of leaves.
Then on his ear what sounds
Of harmony arose!
Far music and the distance-mellowed song
From bowers of merriment;
The waterfall remote;
The murmuring of the leafy groves;
The single nightingale
Perched in the Rosier by, so richly toned,
That never from that most melodious bird,
Singing a love-song to his brooding mate,
Did Thracian shepherd by the grave
Of Orpheus hear a sweeter song;
Tho’ there the Spirit of the Sepulchre
All his own power infuse, to swell
The incense that he loves.
And oh! what odours the voluptuous vale
Scatters from jasmine bowers.
From yon rose wilderness,
From clustered henna, and from orange groves
That with such perfumes fill the breeze,
As Peris to their Sister bear,
When from the summit of some lofty tree
She hangs encaged, the captive of the Dives.
They from their pinions shake
The sweetness of celestial flowers,
And as her enemies impure
From that impervious poison far away
Fly groaning with the torment, she the while
Inhales her fragrant food.
Such odours flowed upon the world
When at Mohammed’s nuptials, word
Went forth in Heaven to roll
The everlasting gates of Paradise
Back on their living hinges, that its gales
Might visit all below; the general bliss
Thrilled every bosom, and the family
Of man, for once partook one common joy.
Full of the joy, yet still awake
To wonder, on went Thalaba;
On every side the song of mirth,
The music of festivity,
Invite the passing youth.
Wearied at length with hunger and with heat
He enters in a banquet room,
Where round a fountain brink,
On silken carpets sate the festive train.
Instant thro’ all his frame
Delightful coolness spread;
The playing fount refreshed
The agitated air;
The very light came cooled thro’ silvering panes
Of pearly shell, like the pale moon-beam tinged;
Or where the wine-vase filled the aperture,
Rosy as rising morn, or softer gleam
Of saffron, like the sunny evening mist:
Thro’ every hue, and streaked by all
The flowing fountain played.
Around the water-edge
Vessels of wine, alternate placed,
Ruby and amber, tinged its little waves.
From golden goblets there
The guests sate quaffing the delicious juice
Of Shiraz’ golden grape.
But Thalaba took not the draught
For rightly he knew had the Prophet forbidden
That beverage the mother of sins.
Nor did the urgent guests
Proffe
r a second time the liquid fire
For in the youth’s strong eye they saw
No moveable resolve.
Yet not uncourteous, Thalaba
Drank the cool draught of innocence,
That fragrant from its dewy vase
Came purer than it left its native bed.
And he partook the odorous fruits,
For all rich fruits were there.
Water-melons rough of rind,
Whose pulp the thirsty lip
Dissolved into a draught:
Pistachios from the heavy-clustered trees
Of Malavert, or Haleb’s fertile soil,
And Casbin’s luscious grapes of amber hue,
That many a week endure
The summer sun intense,
Till by its powerful fire
All watery particles exhaled, alone
The strong essential sweetness ripens there.
Here cased in ice, the apricot,
A topaz, crystal-set:
Here on a plate of snow
The sunny orange rests,
And still the aloes and the sandal-wood
From golden censers o’er the banquet room
Diffuse their dying sweets.
Anon a troop of females formed the dance
Their ancles bound with bracelet-bells
That made the modulating harmony.
Transparent garments to the greedy eye
Gave all their harlot limbs,
That writhed, in each immodest gesture skilled.
With earnest eyes the banqueters
Fed on the sight impure;
And Thalaba, he gazed,
But in his heart he bore a talisman
Whose blessed Alchemy
To virtuous thoughts refined
The loose suggestions of the scene impure.
Oneiza’s image swam before his sight,
His own Arabian Maid.
He rose, and from the banquet room he rushed,
And tears ran down his burning cheek,
And nature for a moment woke the thought
And murmured, that from all domestic joys
Estranged, he wandered o’er the world
A lonely being, far from all he loved.
Son of Hodeirah, not among thy crimes
That murmur shall be written!
From tents of revelry,
From festal bowers, to solitude he ran,
And now he reached where all the rills
Of that well-watered garden in one tide
Rolled their collected waves.
A straight and stately bridge
Stretched its long arches o’er the ample stream.
Strong in the evening and distinct its shade
Lay on the watry mirror, and his eye
Complete Poetical Works of Robert Southey Page 104