BOOK OF TIMUR.'

THE WINTER AND TIMUR.

LOSED around them now the winter

CLOSED

With impetuous choler: shedding

Its ice-breath upon all creatures,

It began perversely training

The whole pack of winds upon them:
Galloped over them despotic.

All its hurricanes frost-rowelled,

Through the plan of Timur galloped,

Shrilled with threats at him, and spake thus:

"Thou ill-fated, lightly, slowly

Step-thou tyrant of injustice:

Shall thy blazes any longer

Scorch the hearts of men and shrivel?

Art thou one of the damn'd spirits?

Be it so I am the other.

Thou and I, both of us hoary,

So we stiffen lands and people.
Art thou Mars, then? I am Saturn,

Noxious sign among the planets,
Direfullest of all the circle.

Thou dost kill the life, thou chillest
All the air; but I have breezes,
Icier are they than thou canst be.
Thy wild hordes delight to torture
With a thousand pains the faithful :
But a greater pain to find

Grant it, God! be in my season.
And, by God, I'll nought remit thee.
Let God hear what thee I proffer!
Yes, by God! Old man, no hearthstone
Broad with store of laughing fuel,
No flame kindled in December,

From the death-cold shall defend thee."

TO SULEIKA.

HEE with fair perfume to flatter,

THE

And thy pleasures to enhance

With a single drop of attar,

Thousand buds in flame must dance.

Flasklet, slender as thy finger,

That in scent the rose-leaves furled

May for thee for ever linger,

This to own, consumes a world.

A whole world of vital thriving,
With whose stress of pulses long
Ago the Bulbul was conniving
In her spirit-stirring song.

Should that sorrow make us sorrow
Which increases our delight?

Did not Timur have to borrow
Myriad souls to fund his might?