Speak on." "A fiend has got into my house,"
Exclaimed the staring man," and tortures us:
One of thine officers ;-he comes, the abhorr'd,
And takes possession of my house, my board,

My bed :-I have two daughters and a wife,

And the wild villain comes and makes me mad with life."

"Is he there now?" said Mahmoud :-"No ;-he left The house when I did, of my wits bereft;

And laugh'd me down the street, because I vowed

I'd bring the prince himself to lay him in his shroud. I'm mad with want-I'm mad with misery,

And oh thou Sultan Mahmoud, God cries out for thee!"

The Sultan comforted the man, and said,

"Go home, and I will send thee wine and bread,”

(For he was poor)" and other comforts. Go;

And, should the wretch return, let Sultan Mahmoud

know."

In three days' time, with haggard eyes and beard, And shaken voice, the suitor re-appeared,

And said "He's come."-Mahmoud said not a word, But rose and took four slaves, each with a sword,

And went with the vexed man. They reach the place,

And hear a voice, and see a female face,

That to the window fluttered in affright :

"Go in," said Mahmoud, "and put out the light;
But tell the females first to leave the room;
And when the drunkard follows them, we come."

The man went in. There was a cry, and hark !
A table falls, the window is struck dark:
Forth rush the breathless women; and behind
With curses comes the fiend in desperate mind.
In vain the sabres soon cut short the strife,

And chop the shrieking wretch, and drink his bloody life.

"Now light the light," the Sultan cried aloud. 'Twas done; he took it in his hand, and bowed

Over the corpse, and looked upon the face;
Then turned and knelt beside it in the place,
And said a prayer, and from his lips there crept
Some gentle words of pleasure, and he wept.

In reverend silence the spectators wait, Then bring him at his call both wine and meat; And when he had refreshed his noble heart, He bade his host be blest, and rose up to depart.

The man amazed, all mildness now, and tears, Feil at the Sultan's feet, with many prayers, And begged him to vouchsafe to tell his slave, The reason first of that command he gave About the light; then, when he saw the face, Why he knelt down; and lastly, how it was, That fare so poor as his detained him in the place.

The Sultan said, with much humanity,

"Since first I saw thee come, and heard thy cry,

I could not rid me of a dread, that one

By whom such daring villainies were done,

Must be some lord of mine, perhaps a lawless son.
Whoe'er he was, I knew my task, but feared
A father's heart, in case the worst appeared:
For this I had the light put out; but when
I saw the face, and found a stranger slain,

I knelt and thanked the sovereign arbiter,
Whose work I had performed through pain and fear;
And then I rose, and was refreshed with food,

The first time since thou cam'st, and marr'dst my

solitude."

LINES

WRITTEN ON A SUDDEN ARRIVAL OF FINE WEATHER IN MAY.

READER! what soul that loves a verse, can see
The spring return, nor glow like you and me?
Hear the rich birds, and see the landscape fill,
Nor long to utter his melodious will?

This, more than ever, leaps into the veins, When spring has been delay'd by winds and rains, And coming with a burst, comes like a show, Blue all above, and basking green below,

And all the people culling the sweet prime : Then issues forth the bee, to clutch the thyme,

And the bee poet rushes into rhyme.