From every danger, every storm secured,
How hast thou suffer'd! what hast thou endured
Daughter of palaces! and can it be
That this bleak desert is a home for thee!
These rocks thy dwelling! thou, who shouldst have known
Of life the sunbeam and the smile alone!
Oh, yet forgive!—be all my guilt forgot,
Nor bid me leave thee to so rude a lot!"
"That lot is fix’d; 'twere fruitless to repine,
Still must a gulf divide my fate from thine.
I may forgive—but not at will the heart
Can bid its dark remembrances depart.
No, Hamet, no!—too deeply these are traced,
Yet the hour comes when all shall be effaced!
Not long on earth, not long, shall Zayda keep
Her lonely vigils o'er the grave to weep:
E'en now, prophetic of my early doom,
Speaks to my soul a presage of the tomb;
And ne'er in vain did hopeless mourner feel
That deep foreboding o'er the bosom steal!
Soon shall I slumber calmly by the side
Of him for whom I lived, and would have died;
