130
THE GIAOUR.
It is as if the desert bird,[decimal 1]
Whose beak unlocks her bosom's stream
To still her famished nestlings' scream,
Nor mourns a life to them transferred,
Should rend her rash devoted breast.
And find them flown her empty nest.
The keenest pangs the wretched find
Are rapture to the dreary void,
The leafless desert of the mind.
The waste of feelings unemployed.960
Who would be doomed to gaze upon
A sky without a cloud or sun?
Less hideous far the tempest's roar.
Than ne'er to brave the billows more—[lower-roman 1]
Thrown, when the war of winds is o'er,
A lonely wreck on Fortune's shore,
'Mid sullen calm, and silent bay.
Unseen to drop by dull decay;—
Better to sink beneath the shock
Than moulder piecemeal on the rock!970
*****
"Father! thy days have passed in peace,
'Mid counted beads, and countless prayer;
To bid the sins of others cease.
Thyself without a crime or care,
Save transient ills that all must bear,
Has been thy lot from youth to age;
Whose beak unlocks her bosom's stream
To still her famished nestlings' scream,
Nor mourns a life to them transferred,
Should rend her rash devoted breast.
And find them flown her empty nest.
The keenest pangs the wretched find
Are rapture to the dreary void,
The leafless desert of the mind.
The waste of feelings unemployed.960
Who would be doomed to gaze upon
A sky without a cloud or sun?
Less hideous far the tempest's roar.
Than ne'er to brave the billows more—[lower-roman 1]
Thrown, when the war of winds is o'er,
A lonely wreck on Fortune's shore,
'Mid sullen calm, and silent bay.
Unseen to drop by dull decay;—
Better to sink beneath the shock
Than moulder piecemeal on the rock!970
*****
"Father! thy days have passed in peace,
'Mid counted beads, and countless prayer;
To bid the sins of others cease.
Thyself without a crime or care,
Save transient ills that all must bear,
Has been thy lot from youth to age;
Variants
- ↑ Than feeling we must feel no more.—[MS.]
Notes
- ↑ The pelican is, I believe, the bird so libelled, by the imputation of feeding her chickens with her blood. [It has been suggested that the curious bloody secretion ejected from the mouth of the flamingo may have given rise to the belief, through that bird having been mistaken for the "pelican of the wilderness."—Encycl. Brit., art. "Pelican" (by Professor A. Newton), xviii. 474.]
