AMID your solitudes, ye FORESTS wild,

Beneath the umbrage of your spreading boughs,

Receive and shelter lorn AFFLICTION’s child:

O sooth his sorrows, and attest his vows!

 

If e’er blind passion prompt his steps to stray:

If e’er ambition’s fire inflame his mind:

If schemes of golden joy delude away,

Or love of base— ungrateful human kind,

 

Cause him to quit this calm tho’ rude retreat,

For yon vain WORLD of treachery and strife;

May every power that moves his pulse to beat,

Resign to pale disease his lingering life,

 

Until long-gathering storms of tyrant hate,

Hurl his torn limbs where death’s dire caverns gloom:

Beyond his last faint gasp, the rage of fate

Deny him rest within the darkling tomb.

 

There may the hags of discord scream affright,

There demons rend his cold corse from the ground,

And shroud his soul in ever-during night,

Like EBLIS* plunged in DOZAUK’s* gulph profound.

 

If from these mountain solitudes he rove,

Seeking the haunts of man with recreant eye;

Till the MOST MERCIFUL, that reigns above,

Who led him hither, grant him here to die.

 

Eternal SOURCE of all in earth or heaven,

From angel energy to reptile rest!

May health, may peace, to ACHMED here be given,

With faith in thee, no impious doubts infest.

 

If any tissue of the WORLD remain

Inwoven with the fibres of his heart;

Let it not prove the cause of grief or pain,

Holding the barbed fangs of treachery’s dart.

 

All that the HAKEEM,* AMEER,* HADGY,* boasts

Of knowlege, power, or virtue, flows from thee.

Thy PROVIDENCE his guard—can armed hosts

Enslave the MAN determined to be free?

 

If ACHMED’s vows, blest ALLAH! meet thy will,

A faithful firmness shall those vows fulfil.