narrow path they stand.

Thus youth and age together meet,
And life's divided moments share;
This can't advance till that retreat,
What's here increas'd, is lessen'd there.

And thus the falling shades of night
Still struggle with the lucid ray,
And e'er they stretch their gloomy flight
Must win the lengthen'd space from day.

_Abou Alola_.

[32] Abou Alola is esteemed as one of the most excellent of the
Arabian poets. He was born blind, but this did not deter him from
the pursuit of literature. Abou Alola died at Maara in the year
449, aged eighty-six.

THE DEATH OF NEDHAM ALMOLK

Thy virtues fam'd thro' every land,
Thy spotless life, in age and youth,
Prove thee a pearl, by nature's hand,
Form'd out of purity and truth.

Too long its beams of Orient light
Upon a thankless world were shed;
Allah has now reveng'd the slight,
And call'd it to its native bed.

_Shebal Addaulet_.

LINES TO A LOVER

When you told us our glances soft, timid and mild,
Could occasion such wounds in the heart,
Can ye wonder that yours, so ungovern'd and wild,
Some wounds to our cheeks should impart?

The wounds on our cheeks are but transient, I own,
With a blush they appear and decay;
But those on the heart, fickle youths, ye have shown
To be even more transient than they.

_Waladata_.

VERSES TO MY DAUGHTERS[33]

With jocund heart and cheerful brow
I used to hail the festal morn--
How must Mohammed greet it now?--
A prisoner helpless and forlorn.

While these dear maids in beauty's bloom,
With want opprest, with rags o'erspread,
By sordid labors at the loom
Must earn a poor, precarious bread.

Those feet that never touched the ground,
Till musk or camphor strew'd the way,
Now bare and swoll'n with many a wound.
Must struggle thro' the miry clay.

Those radiant cheeks are veil'd in woe,
A shower descends from every eye,
And not a starting tear can flow,
That wakes not an attending sigh.

Fortune, that whilom own'd my sway,
And bow'd obsequious to my nod,
Now sees me destin'd to obey,
And bend beneath oppression's rod.

Ye mortals with success elate,
Who bask in hope's delusive beam,
Attentive view Mohammed's fate,
And own that bliss is but a dream.

_Mohammed Bed Abad_.

[33] Seville was one of those small sovereignties into which Spain