There stood one tent, from the rest apart—
That was the place of a wounded heart.
Oh! deep is a wounded heart, and strong;
A voice that cries against mighty wrong;
And full of death, as a hot wind's blight
Doth the ire of a crush'd affection light.
Maimuna from realm to realm had pass'd,
And her tale had rung like a trumpet's blast.
There had been words from her pale lips pour'd,
Each one a spell to unsheath the sword;
The Tartar had sprung from his steed to hear,
And the dark chief of Araby grasp'd his spear,
Till a chain of long lances begirt the wall,
And a vow was recorded that doom'd its fall.
Back with the dust of her son she came,
When her voice had kindled that lightning flame,
She came in the might of a queenly foe,
Banner and javelin and bended bow;
But a deeper power on her forehead sate—
There sought the warrior his star of Fate;
Her eye's wild flash through the tented line
Was hail'd as a spirit and a sign,
And the faintest tone from her lip was caught,
As a sibyl's breath of prophetic thought.
Vain, bitter glory!—the gift of Grief,
That lights up vengeance to find relief,
Transient and faithless!—it cannot fill
So the deep void of the heart, nor still
The yearning left by a broken tie,
That haunted fever of which we die!
Sickening she turn'd from her sad renown,
As a king in death might reject his crown;
Slowly the strength of the walls gave way—
She whither'd faster, from day to day.
All the proud sounds of that banner'd plain,
To stay the flight of her soul were vain;
Like an eagle caged, it had striven, and worn
The frail dust ne'er for such conflicts born,
Till the bars were rent, and the hour was come
For its fearful rushing through darkness home.
The bright sun set in his pomp and pride,
As on that eve when the fair boy died;
She gazed from her couch, and a softness fell
O'er her weary heart with the day's farewell;
She spoke, and her voice in its dying tone
Had an echo of feelings that long seem'd flown.
—She murmur'd a low sweet cradle song,
Strange 'midst the din of a warrior throng,
A song of the time when her boy's young cheek
Had glow'd on her breast in its slumber meek,
But something which breathed from that mournful strain,
Sent a fitful gust o'er her soul again,
And starting as if from a dream, she cried,
—"Give him proud burial at my side!
There by yon lake, where the palm-boughs wave,
Where the temples are fallen, make there our grave."
Page:Felicia Hemans in The New Monthly Magazine Volume 14 1825.pdf/29
