Poems (Proctor)/The Song by the Barada
THE SONG BY THE BARADA.
Over the brow of Lebanon,In a blaze of splendor sank the sun, Its gold on the valley glowing;After a day now dark, now fair,With a wild sirocco sweeping bareThe mountain paths, as we journeyed there, To stately Baalbec going.
All in the dusk our tents gleamed whiteWhere lone Barada lulled the night, Cool from the snows of Hermon;Around us, rose and hawthorn bloomsHung, sad, above Abila's tombs;And her ruined temples, through the glooms, Looked with a voiceless sermon.
The wild wind fell; and, past compare,Up in the wonderful depths of air Floated the starry islands;—Floated so calm, so bright, so near,From the curtained door I leaned to hear,Perchance, some song of the blessed, clear, In the great o'erarching silence.
By the tethered horses, from man to manSpeech and laughter alternate ran, Where the muleteers were lying;But story and merriment fainter grew,Till the only sound the tent-court knewWas the dragoman's footfall echoing through, Or the wind in the walnut sighing.
Listen! what steals on the air? Has the breezeWafted down from the shining seas A song of the seraphs seven?—Soft and low as the soothing fallOf the fountains of Eden; sweet as the callOf angels over the jasper wall That welcomes a soul to heaven.
It swells! it mounts! it fills the vale!The hawthorns tremble; the roses pale At its passionate, glorious mazes!—'T is a Peri hymning of Paradise!'T is the plaint of a spirit that yearns and sighs,Though lapped in the nameless bliss of the skies, For a lost love's embraces!
A moment's hush with the falling strain;—And the wild wind, rising, roared amain O'er the stream and the covert shady!Breathless I stood in the curtained door,But the ravishing melody came no more;And the dragoman, crossing the tent before, Cried, "The Nightingale, my lady."
Yet still, when April suns are low,I hear the wild sirocco blow, And see, in memory's vision,Abila's ruins strew the hill;The stars the Syrian azure fill;While, listening, all my pulses thrill As soars that song Elysian.