WHEN Jehaundar Shaw, in con­sequence of the Sultaun’s orders, had fixed his residence for some time longer in the city of Menousowaud, after the lapse of a short respite, a change appeared on the face of nature, and the signs of revolution became evident in the dispo­sition of time. The sovereign of the region of the planets having broken the scales of equability,* extended the hand of oppression on the virgin of the wheat-sheaf.* On this account the skirt of day became shortened, and the stately robes of night were lengthened. The army of frost, which had been long waiting in the ambush of hope, having received intelligence of this event, moved from its station to subdue the habitable regions; and issuing on the plains of the world, spread wide the hand of devastation, and from unrelenting cruelty left not a blade of verdure on the ground.

Having levied contributions on the affluent inhabitants of the garden and orchard, they stripped them entirely of their leaves and beauty. Mankind, in dread of the attacks of this unfeeling host, shuddered like the reed at the blast; and as the fox, rejoicing in his hairy covering, shrunk into their cell. The earth, in order that no one might dis­cover him, lay concealed under heaps of cotton;* and the husbandman, withdraw­ing the hand of labour from his occu­pation, slunk into the corner of inertness. The stream, though vehemently inclined to travel the globe, having now dis­charged its fondness for motion, rested in its place; and the breeze, which was wont to draw wavy flourishes on the waters, in alarm, broke his pencil against the rocks.

The trees, bare of cloathing, as the naked in the day of resurrection, lifted their arms in complaint to the skies; and the nightingales, scared by the attacks of winter, deserted the rose-bushes, and left them to the enjoyment of the raven. Time, in expectation of the rising of the standard of spring, became bleached as the jasmine; and the gardener wrote invi­tations upon ice to the visitants of his borders. The natives of the garden, having heard cold reproofs from the tongue of the northern blast, fainted instantly in the path of desolation; and the tulip and rose, resigning their abodes to the owl, saved only their torn vest­ments from the rapacity of December and January. The lofty cypress, which in the empire of the groves had issued the proclamation of sovereignty in its own name, was imprisoned on the brink of the canal, like the plank of the Minber;* and the sosun, which prided itself as the queen of the garden, having yielded the robe of existence an offering to the plun­derers of the storm, sunk into the recess of annihilation. Of the sidelocks of the rose, the curls of the sunbul, and the twisted ringlets of the shumshade, not a single hair remained in the hands of the zephyr. Even the sunnobir, with all his fortitude and vigour, resigning his property to the plunderers of December, became impoverished as the chinar. The rose-bud, counting the hidden stores of existence, in its sorrow resigned its life; and the cruel northern blast, tearing the leaves of the rose, scattered them on every quarter.