Thalaba the Destroyer

How beautiful is night! A dewy freshness fills the silent air, No mist obscures, no little cloud Breaks the whole serene of heaven: In full-orbed glory the majestic moon Rolls thro the dark blue depths. Beneath her steady ray The desert circle spreads, Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky. How beautiful is night!

Who at this untimely hour Wanders o’er the desert sands? No station is in view, No palm-grove islanded amid the waste. The mother and her child, The widow and the orphan at this hour Wander o’er the desert sands.

Alas! the setting sun Saw Zeinab in her bliss, Hodeirah’s wife beloved. Alas! the wife beloved, The fruitful mother late, Whom when the daughters of Arabia named They wished their lot like her’s; She wanders o’er the desert sands A wretched widow now, The fruitful mother of so fair a race, With only one preserved, She wanders o’er the wilderness.

No tear relieved the burthen of her heart; Stunned with the heavy woe she felt like one Half-wakened from a midnight dream of blood. But sometimes when her boy Would wet her hand with tears, And looking up to her fixed countenance, Amid his bursting sobs Say the dear name of Mother, then would she Utter a feeble groan. At length collecting, Zeinab turned her eyes To heaven, exclaiming, “praised be the Lord! “He gave, he takes away, “The Lord our God is good!”