from experience, that there were both thunder and lightning to come ere it dispersed.
But a sound of distant plaintive melody was heard. A sweet voice sighing to a lute. The Sultan listened. “Bring hither the minstrel,” he said in a subdued tone; and a lovely, fair-haired boy, in a page’s dress of pale-green silk, was led blushing into the presence.
“Sing to me, child,” said the Lord of the East. And the youth touched his lute, with grace and wondrous skill, and sang, in accents soft as the ripple of a rill,
the violet’s love.
Shall I tell what the violet said to the star,
While she gazed through her tears on his beauty, afar?
She sang, but her singing was only a sigh,
And nobody heard it, but Heaven, Love, and I,
A sigh, full of fragrance and beauty, it stole
Through the stillness up, up, to the star’s beaming soul.
She sang—“Thou art glowing with glory and might,
And I’m but a flower, frail, lowly, and light.
I ask not thy pity, I seek not thy smile;
I ask but to worship thy beauty awhile;
To sigh to thee, sing to thee, bloom for thine eye,
And when thou art weary, to bless thee and die!”
Shall I tell what the star to the violet said,
While ashamed, ’neath his love-look, she hung her young head?
He sang—but his singing was only a ray,
And none but the flower and I heard the dear lay.
How it thrilled, as it fell, in its melody clear,
Through the little heart, heaving with rapture and fear!
Ah no! love! I dare not! too tender, too pure,
For me to betray, were the words he said to her;
But as she lay listening that low lullaby,
A smile lit the tear in the timid flower’s eye;
And when death had stolen her beauty and bloom,
The ray came again to play over her tomb.
Long ere the lay had ceased, the cloud in the Sultan’s eye had dissolved itself in tears. Never had music so moved his soul.
