Page:Records of Woman.pdf/209

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'Twas desolate Where Giafar's halls, beneath the burning sun, Spread out in ruin lay. The songs had ceas'd; The lights, the perfumes, and the genii-tales, Had ceas'd; the guests were gone. Yet still one voice Was there—the fountain's; thro' those eastern courts, Over the broken marble and the grass, Its low clear music shedding mournfully.

And still another voice!—an aged man, Yet with a dark and fervent eye beneath His silvery hair, came, day by day, and sate On a white column's fragment; and drew forth, From the forsaken walls and dim arcades, A tone mat shook them with its answering thrill To his deep accents. Many a glorious tale He told that sad yet stately solitude, Pouring his memory's fulness o'er its gloom, Like waters in the waste; and calling up,