Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE MOALLAKAH OF HARETH, SELECTION, by REGINALD HEBER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE MOALLAKAH OF HARETH, SELECTION, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: And asma! Lovely sojourner! Wilt thou forsake our land
Last Line: And horses neigh'd, and camels scream'd, and man cried out on man!
Subject(s): War


AND Asma! lovely sojourner! wilt thou forsake our land,
Forgetful of thy plighted vows on Shamma's glittering sand?
No more in Shoreb's rugged dell I see thee by my side,
No more in Katha's mead of green where vocal waters glide!
In Ayla and in Shobathan all lonely must I go,
And, therefore, sleep has fled my soul, and fast my sorrows flow!

Yet am I loved, and yet my eyes behold the beacon light,
Which Hinda kindles on her hill, to lure me through the night,
Broad as the dawn, from Akik's brow its ruddy embers shine,
But Hinda's heart may never meet an answering glow in mine!
And I must seek a nobler aid against consuming care,
Where all the brethren of my tribe the battle bow prepare.

My camel with the mother-bird in swiftness well may vie,
Tall as a tent, 'mid desert sands that rears her progeny,
That lists the murmur of the breeze, the hunter's lightest sound
With stealthy foot at twilight fall soft gliding o'er the ground;

But not the ostrich speed of fire my camel can excel,
Whose footstep leaves so light a mark we guess not where it fell;
Now up, now down, like wither'd leaves that flit before the wind,
On her I stem the burning noon that strikes the valiant blind.

Yes, we have heard an angry sound of danger from afar,
Our brother's bands of Tayleb's seed have braved us to the war;
The good and evil they confound, their words are fierce and fell,
"Their league," say they, "is with the tribe that in the desert dwell."
Their men of might have met by night, and as the day began,
A proud and a disdainful shout throughout their army ran,
And horses neigh'd, and camels scream'd, and man cried out on man!





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