On the occurrence of these disastrous events exciting regret, exclamations of woe burst from the hearts of mortals, and the dust of sorrow sat upon the vesture of the universe. The heavens, from this calamity, so wept, in sanguine showers, that their concave, like the cup of the tulip, overflowed the dawn with blood. The globe so beat the hand of grief on her surface, that it became blue, like the expanse of the firmament; and beholders dreaded, lest the band of connection should be destroyed between earth and sky, and the enamel vase of the firmament be dashed against the clayey pot of the ground.
The chief nobles and heads of families, according to approved customs and established usage, having diligently prepared the requisites for laying out and the necessaries for the journey of the swift traveller to the regions of eternity, as befitted his imperial station, covered the corpse with various compounds and essences of musk, camphire, aloes, amber, roses, and sandal.
In the same manner, ladies of pure bosoms and chaste matrons prepared the necessaries for the inevitable journey of that beautiful cypress of the grove of love and constancy, and blooming shrub of the garden of paradise, as became her condition.
They then conveyed to the retired apartments of futurity, at the same time and side by side, the funeral litters of the late gracers of the throne of love and beauty, in mournful pomp; at sight of which, afflictive as the last day, blood dropped from the heart of rock. The heavens sympathized with the groans and scalding tears of the blue-vested and bareheaded mourners, and the orb of the sun became damped by the mist of their sighs. According to the decree of wonder-working love, they deposited the two most deserving of the world of affection in the same apartment of final repose; and agreeably to the established usage of this abode of decay, seemingly flourishing, having committed as a treasure to the earth the bodies of those whose names will live for ever, placed over them the talisman of example.
Expand for an instant thine heart, O thou wise and contemplative, and observe with the eye of just penetration, that thou mayest remark, how the sprinklings of the cup of affliction are shed alike on all mankind, and how the sieve of fate scatters the dust of dissolution on the heads of all the sitters in the assembly of mortality.
The world, its afflictions and enjoyments, like the frown of the lovely and the girdle of the waist of the fair, are full of intricacies. The promises of fortune, and the vicissitudes of life, like the tresses of the beautiful, are involved in mazy perplexity. Of the cruel inconstancy of the skies, the blighted bud and the unseasonable scattering of the rose-leaves, are an ample proof; and of the instability of this world and the uncertain duration of life, the swell of the bubble and the flow of the stream are clear emblems. The cypress, notwithstanding its straight stature, yet, from the deviation of the skies, hath its foot enchained; and the breeze, with all its delicacy of texture and activity of motion, by the cruelty of seasons, becomes captive to the waters.