“If you bid me, I will speak.

There's no sap in dry grass,
No marrow in dry bones! Alas,
The mind of old men is weak !

“I am old, I am very old :

I have seen the primeval man,
I have seen the great Gengis Khan,

Arrayed in his robes of gold.
“What I say to you is the truth;

And I say to you, O Khan,
Pursue not the star-white man,

Pursue not the beautiful youth.
“ Him the Almighty made,

And brought him forth of the light,
At the verge and end of the night,
When men on the mountain prayed.

“ He was born at the break of day,
When abroad the angels walk;
He hath listened to their talk,
And he knoweth what they say.

“ Gifted with Allah's grace,

Like the moon of Ramazan
When it shines in the skies, O Khan,
Is the light of his beautiful face.

“ When first on earth he trod,

The first words that he said
Were these, as he stood and prayed,
There is no God but God!

“ And he shall be king of men,

For Allah hath heard his prayer,
And the Archangel in the air,
Gabriel, hath said, Amen!”

TO THE STORK.

ARMENIAN POPULAR SONG, FROM THE PROSE VERSION OF ALISHAN.

WELCOME, O Stork! that dost wing

Thy flight from the far-away!
Thou hast brought us the signs of Spring,

Thou hast made our sad hearts gay.

Descend, O Stork! descend

Upon our roof to rest;
In our ash-tree, O my friend,

My darling, make thy nest.

To thee, O Stork, I complain,

O Stork, to thee I impart
The thousand sorrows, the pain

And aching of my heart.

When thou away didst go,

Away from this tree of ours,
The withering winds did blow,
And dried up all the flowers.

Dark grew the brilliant sky,

Cloudy and dark and drear;
They were breaking the snow on high,

And winter was drawing near.

From Varaca's rocky wall,

From the rock of Varaca unrolled,
The snow came and covered all,

And the green meadow was cold.

O Stork, our garden with snow

Was hidden away and lost,
And the rose-trees that in it grow

Were withered by snow and frost.

THE BOY AND THE BROOK.

ARMENIAN POPULAR SONG, FROM THE PROSE VERSION OF ALISHAN.

Down from yon distant mountain height

The brooklet flows through the village street:
A boy comes forth to wash his hands,
Washing, yes washing, there he stands,

In the water cool and sweet.

“ Brook, from what mountain dost thou come ?

O my brooklet cool and sweet!”
“I come from yon mountain high and cold,
Where lieth the new snow on the old,

And melts in the summer heat.”

“Brook, to what river dost thou go?

O my brooklet cool and sweet!"
“I go to the river there below
Where in bunches the violets grow,

And sun and shadow meet.”

“Brook, to what garden dost thou go?

O my brooklet cool and sweet !”
“I go to that garden in the vale
Where all night long the nightingale

Her love-song doth repeat."
“ Brook, to what fountain dost thou go ?

O my brooklet cool and sweet!"
“I go to that fountain, at whose brink
The maid that loves thee comes to drink,
And, whenever she looks therein,
I rise to meet her, and kiss her chin,

And my joy is then complete."

THE SIEGE OF KAZAN.

TARTAR SONG, FROM THE PROSE VERSION OF CHODZKO.

BLACK are the moors before Kazan,

And their stagnant waters smell of blood :
I said in my heart, with horse and man,

I will swim across this shallow flood.
Under the feet of Argamack,

Like new moons were the shoes he bare,
Silken trappings hung on his back,

In a talisman on his neck, a prayer.
My warriors, thought I, are following me;

But when I looked behind, alas!
Not one of all the band could I see,

All had sunk in the black morass !
Where are our shallow fords ? and where

The power of Kazan with its fourfold gates ?
From the prison windows our maidens fair

Talk of us still through the iron grates.
We cannot hear them; for horse and man

Lie buried deep in the dark abyss !
Ah! the black day hath come down on Kazan!

Ah! was ever a grief like this ?

Flower-de-Luce

AND

RECENT POEMS.

BEAUTIFUL LILY.
BEAUTIFUL lily, dwelling by still rivers,

Or solitary mere,
Or where the sluggish meadow-brook delivers

Its waters to the weir !
Thou laughest at the mill, the whirr and worry

Of spindle and of loom,
And the great wheel that toils amid the hurry

And rushing of the flume.
Born to the purple, born to joy and pleasance,

Thou dost not toil nor spin,
But makest glad and radiant with thy presence

The meadow and the lin.
The wind blows, and uplifts thy drooping banner,

And round thee throng and run
The rushes, the green yeomen of thy manor,

The outlaws of the sun.
The burnished dragon-fly is thine attendant,

And tilts against the field,
And down the listed sunbeam rides resplendent

With steel-blue mail and shield.
Thou art the Iris, fair among the fairest,

Who, armed with golden rod
And winged with the celestial azure, bearest

The message of some God.
Thou art the Muse, who far from crowded cities

Hauntest the sylvan streams,
Playing on pipes of reed the artless ditties

That come to us as dreams.

O flower-de-luce, bloom on, and let the river

Linger to kiss thy feet!
O flower of song, bloom on, and make for ever

The world more fair and sweet.

PALINGENESIS.

I LAY upon the headland height, and listened
To the incessant sobbing of the sea

In caverns under me,
And watched the waves, that tossed and fled and glistened.
Until the rolling meadows of amethyst

Melted away in mist.
Then suddenly, as one from sleep, I started;
For round about me all the sunny capes

Seemed peopled with the shapes
Of those whoin I had known in days departed,
Apparelled in the loveliness which gleams

On faces seen in dreams.
A moment only, and the light and glory
Faded away, and the disconsolate shore

Stood lonely as before;
And the wild roses of the promontory
Around me shuddered in the wind, and shed

Their petals of pale red.
There was an old belief that in the embers
Of all things their primordial form exists,

And cunning alchemists
Could re-create the rose with all its members
From its own ashes, but without the bloom,

Without the lost perfume.
Ah me! what wonder-working, occult science
Can from the ashes in our hearts once more

The rose of youth restore ?
What craft of alchemy can bid defiance
To time and change, and for a single hour

Renew this phantom flower ?
“Oh, give me back," I cried, “ the vanished splendours,
The breath of morn, and the exultant strife,

When the swift stream of life
Bounds over its rocky channel, and surrenders
The pond with all its lilies, for the leap

Into the unknown deep!”