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Unto the ninth: "The camels slowly bring
Thy goods; but Wisdom has the swallow's wing."

: -

And lastly, when the tenth did question make,
These were the ready words which Ali spake :
“Wealth is a darkness which the soul should fear;
But Wisdom is the lamp that makes it clear."

Crimson with shame the questioners withdrew,
And they declared: "The Prophet's words were

true;

The mouth of Ali is the golden door

Of Wisdom."

When his friends to Ali bore

These words, he smiled and said: "And should they

ask

The same until my dying day, the task

Were easy; for the stream from Wisdom's well,

Which God supplies, is inexhaustible.”

AN ORIENTAL IDYL.

A SILVER javelin which the hills
Have hurled upon the plain below,
The fleetest of the Pharpar's rills,
Beneath me shoots in flashing flow.

I hear the never-ending laugh

Of jostling waves that come and go, And suck the bubbling pipe, and quaff The sherbet cooled in mountain snow.

The flecks of sunshine gleam like stars Beneath the canopy of shade;

And in the distant, dim bazaars

I scarcely hear the hum of trade.

No evil fear, no dream forlorn,
Darkens my heaven of perfect blue;

My blood is tempered to the morn
My very heart is steeped in dew.

What Evil is I cannot tell;

But half I guess what Joy may be ; And, as a pearl within its shell,

The happy spirit sleeps in me.

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The tides of Passion's ruddy sea,

But live the sweet, unconscious life

That breathes from yonder jasmine tree.

Upon the glittering pageantries

Of

gay Damascus streets I look

As idly as a babe that sees

The painted pictures of a book.

Forgotten now are name and race;

The Past is blotted from my brain ; For Memory sleeps, and will not trace The weary pages o'er again.

I only know the morning shines,
And sweet the dewy morning air;
But does it play with tendrilled vines?
Or does it lightly lift my hair?

Deep-sunken in the charmed repose,
This ignorance is bliss extreme:
And whether I be Man, or Rose,

O, pluck me not from out my dream!

THE ANGEL OF PATIENCE.

"Patience is the key of Content."-MAHOMET.

To cheer, to help us, children of the dust,
More than one angel has Our Father given;
But one alone is faithful to her trust.

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The best, the brightest exile out of Heaven.

Her ways are not the ways of pleasantness;
Her paths are not the lightsome paths of joy;
She walks with wrongs that cannot find redress,
And dwells in mansions Time and Death destroy.

She waits until her stern precursor, Care,
Has lodged on foreheads, open as the morn,
To plough his deep, besieging trenches there-
The signs of struggles which the heart has borne,

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