“The lute was enchanted! The youth was a Peri, who had lost his way! Surely it must be so!”
“But sing me now a bolder strain!” And the beautiful child flung back his golden curls and swept the strings more proudly than before, and his voice took a clarion-tone, and his dark, steel-blue eyes flashed with heroic fire as he sang
the crimson plume.
Oh! know ye the knight of the red waving plume?
Lo! his lightning smile gleams through the battle’s wild gloom,
Like a flash through the tempest; oh! fly from that smile!
’Tis the wild-fire of fury—it glows to beguile!
And his sword-wave is death, and his war-cry is doom!
Oh! brave not the knight of the dark crimson plume!
His armour is black, as the blackest midnight;
His steed like the ocean-foam, spotlessly white;
His crest a crouched tiger, who dreams of fierce joy—
Its motto “Beware! for I wake to destroy!”
And his sword-wave is death, and his war-cry is doom!
Oh! brave not the knight of the dark crimson plume!
“By Allah! thou hast magic in thy voice! One more! and ask what thou wilt. Were it my signet-ring, 'tis granted!”
Tears of rapture sprung to the eyes of the minstrel-boy, as the Sultan spoke, and his young cheek flushed like a morning cloud. Bending over his lute to hide his emotion, he warbled once again—
the broken heart’s appeal.
Give me back my guileless youth!
Pleasure, Glory, Fortune, Fame,
These I will not stoop to claim!
Take them! All of Beauty’s power,
All the triumph of this hour
Is not worth one blush you stole—
Give me back my bloom of soul!
What have I to do with them?
Loose the garland from my hair!
Thou shouldst wind the night-shade there;
