uld not trust that look or tone: 140
No--nor the blood so near my own.[fh]
That blood--he hath not heard--no more--
I'll watch him closer than before.
He is an Arab[131] to my sight,
Or Christian crouching in the fight--[fi]
But hark!--I hear Zuleika's voice;
Like Houris' hymn it meets mine ear:
She is the offspring of my choice;
Oh! more than ev'n her mother dear,
With all to hope, and nought to fear-- 150
My Peri! ever welcome here![fj]
Sweet, as the desert fountain's wave
To lips just cooled in time to save--
Such to my longing sight art thou;
Nor can they waft to Mecca's shrine
More thanks for life, than I for thine,
Who blest thy birth and bless thee now."[fk]

VI.

Fair, as the first that fell of womankind,
When on that dread yet lovely serpent smiling,
Whose Image then was stamped upon her mind-- 160
But once beguiled--and ever more beguiling;
Dazzling, as that, oh! too transcendent vision
To Sorrow's phantom-peopled slumber given,
When heart meets heart again in dreams Elysian,
And paints the lost on Earth revived in Heaven;
Soft, as the memory of buried love;
Pure, as the prayer which Childhood wafts above;
Was she--the daughter of that rude old Chief,
Who met the maid with tears--but not of grief.

Who hath not proved how feebly words essay[132] 170
To fix one spark of Beauty's heavenly ray?
Who doth not feel, until his failing sight[fl]
Faints into dimness with its own delight,
His changing cheek, his sinking heart confess
The might--the majesty of Loveliness?
Such was Zuleika--such around her shone
The nameless charms unmarked by her alone--
The light of Love, the purity of Grace,[fm]
The mind, the Music[133] breathing from her face,
The heart whose softness harmonized the whole, 180
And oh! that eye was in itself a Soul!

Her graceful arms in meekness bending
Across her gently-budding breast;
At one kind word those arms extending
To clasp the neck of him who blest
His child caressing and carest,
Zuleika came--and Giaffir felt
His purpose half within him melt:
Not that against her fancied weal
His heart though stern could eve