Section XVI

O'er Majnún's spirit, long in darkness cast,A fitful gleam of homeward feeling passed;And now he asks for friends he once preferred,Asks for his mother, broken-wingèd bird;And wishes e'en to visit home again—As if the maddening fire had left his brain.Selim at this brief glimpse of reason caught,And to his mother's distant mansion broughtWithout delay the wanderer. Deep her griefTo see how withered was that verdant leaf—To see the red rose faded from his cheek,His eye so altered, and his frame so weak;From head to foot she kisses him, and weeps;His hair, all matted, in her tears she steeps,And clasps him fondly to her beating heart,As if she never from her boy would part:—'My darling child! the love-game thou hast playedHas thus, alas! reduced thee to a shade;In that encounter sad of mortal scatheThou graspedst the two-edged scimitar of death.Thy father gone, his troubles all are past,Heart-broken man! and I shall follow fast.Arise! and enter thy own mansion here;Come, 'tis thy own sweet home, and doubly dear—Thy nest;—and birds, though distant in their flight,Always return to their own nests at night.While yet an infant in thy cradle-bed,I watched thy slumber, pillowed thy sweet head;And canst thou now that mother's fondness see,And mark without remorse her love for thee?Refuse the joy thy presence can impart,And cast a shadow o'er her drooping heart?'A cloud again obscured the orb of day—Again his wavering intellect gave way;'Mother, there is no hope—the time is past;With gloom eternal is my fate o'ercast;No fault of mine—no crime, to press me down—But all my countless woes to thee are known;Like a poor bird within its cage immured,My soul has long this prison-life endured.Ask me not, mother, to remain at home;For there, to me, no peace can ever come.Oh, better will it be for me to stray'Mid mountain-glens, and herd with beasts of prey,Than linger on a spot where human careOnly augments my misery and despair'He ceased, and kissed his mother's feet, and fledPrecipitate along the path which ledTo the wild mountains. Dreadful was the stroke!The mother's heart, like the old father's, broke;In Death's cold ocean, wave thus follows wave;And thus she followed to the silent grave.Selim again the maniac's haunts explored,Again supplied his frugal board,And, with a mournful voice, the tale revealed—Father and mother gone,Himself now left alone,Sole heir—his doom of desolation sealed—He beat his brows, and from his eyesFell tears of blood; his piercing criesRang through the forest, and again,Pouring the saddest, wildest strain,He hastened from his gloomy cave,To weep upon his mother's grave.But when that paroxysm of grief—That agony intense, but brief—Had, like a whirlwind, passed away,And left him in a milder mood,To love and Lailí still a prey,He trod again his mountain-solitude:For what to him was hoarded store,The wealth of parents now no more?Had he not long, ill-fated one!Abandoned all for love alone?