And the slave replied, "Mohammed
Is my name; my home is Yemen;
And my people are the Asras;
When they love, they love and die."

* * * * *

THE PASSION FLOWER[48] (1856)

I dreamt that once upon a summer night
Beneath the pallid moonlight's eerie glimmer
I saw where, wrought in marble dimly bright,
A ruin of the Renaissance did shimmer.

Yet here and there, in simple Doric form,
A pillar like some solitary giant
Rose from the mass, and, fearless of the storm,
Reared toward the firmament its head defiant.

O'er all that place a heap of wreckage lay,
Triglyphs and pediments and carven portals,
With centaur, sphinx, chimera, satyrs gay--
Figures of fabled monsters and of mortals.

A marble-wrought sarcophagus reposed
Unharmed 'mid fragments of these fabled creatures;
Its lidless depth a dead man's form inclosed,
The pain-wrung face now calm with softened features.

A group of straining caryatides