VIRTUE AND RESIGNATION.

THE few who bravely and sublimely dare,

To act the part thro’ life that DUTY claims,

Who stand aloof from bland ALLUREMENT’s snare,

And bend their souls to no ignoble aims.

Seek not from FORTUNE’s cloud the golden shower,

Mingled with Widows’ tears and Orphans’ blood;

Feel no AMBITION in the blaze of power,

But that of being truly WISE and GOOD:

Crouch not with ADULATION’s courtly band,

To SULTAN pride, or VIZIER’s dangerous sway,

That, whilst it taints the heart, impels the hand,

With dragon grasp to guard its golden prey.

Nor will the faithful MOSLEM’s tongue restrain

The voice of warning from a SULTAN’s ear;

Nor cease to thunder on the minion train,

Those awful truths OPPRESSORS dread to hear.

But if invested with the SOVEREIGN sword,

Fearing th’ Almighty JUDGE of earth and Heaven,

He shall behold THE RULE OF RIGHT restored,

And from his courts the base, the venal, driven.

Driven like the waves when MOSES raised his rod,

And wide disparting, roar’d the MESREAN flood:

Driven like the impious, when the hand of GOD

Smote MOSEILAMA in the vale of blood.

Thus acted ALI, friend of the Most High,

And thus pure HOSAIN, whose lamented death

Draws still the tear from heavenly VIRTUE’s eye,

And claims the sigh of PITY’s gentlest breath.

Of such the PROPHET spoke when thus he said:

To GOD’s high will I wholly am resign’d,

With all who have his sacred LAW obey’d,

True as the arrow pointed with the wind.

‘Ask those who now in purity of heart,

His written precepts own and understand.

Ask those who in that knowledge bear no part,

Far from ARABIA’s happy, favour’d land.

‘Ask them—if they resign their selves to GOD?

Those who in truth affirmative reply,

Follow the path, sweet PEACE, to thine abode,

Serene thro’ life as EDEN’s cloudless sky.

‘His MERCY boundless as his LOVE divine,

Shall from their hearts remove each peccant stain,

His radiant WISDOM in their bosoms shine,

And his OMNIPOTENCE their strength sustain.

‘Ev’n in the night of ENVY’s darkest hate

Of all that rises eminently good;

Ev’n in the moment when the hand of FATE

Waves the keen sabre raised to shed their blood,

‘Shall RESIGNATION calm each mortal fear,

Repress the sigh, restrain the parting tear.’