Whoever has recourse to thee
    Can hope for health no more,
  He’s launched into perdition’s sea,
    A sea without a shore.

  Where’er admission thou canst gain,
    Where’er thy phiz can pierce,
  At once the Doctor they retain,
    The mourners and the hearse.

George.

[37] Written to Abou Alchair Selamu, an Egyptian physician.  The author
     was a physician of Antioch.

ON A LITTLE MAN WITH A VERY LARGE BEARD

  How can thy chin that burden bear? 
    Is it all gravity to shock? 
  Is it to make the people stare? 
    And be thyself a laughing stock?

  When I behold thy little feet
     After thy beard obsequious run,
  I always fancy that I meet
    Some father followed by his son.

  A man like thee scarce e’er appear’d—­
    A beard like thine—­where shall we find it? 
  Surely thou cherishest thy beard
    In hope to hide thyself behind it.

Isaai, Ben Khalif.

LAMIAT ALAJEM[38]

  No kind supporting hand I meet,
  But Fortitude shall stay my feet;
  No borrow’d splendors round me shine,
  But Virtue’s lustre all is mine;
  A Fame unsullied still I boast,
  Obscur’d, conceal’d, but never lost—­
  The same bright orb that led the day
  Pours from the West his mellow’d ray.

  Zaura, farewell!  No more I see
  Within thy walls, a home for me;
  Deserted, spurn’d, aside I’m toss’d,
  As an old sword whose scabbard’s lost: 
  Around thy walls I seek in vain
  Some bosom that will soothe my pain—­
  No friend is near to breathe relief,
  Or brother to partake my grief. 
  For many a melancholy day
  Thro’ desert vales I’ve wound my way;
  The faithful beast, whose back I press,
  In groans laments her lord’s distress;

  In every quiv’ring of my spear
  A sympathetic sigh I hear;
  The camel bending with his load,
  And struggling thro’ the thorny road,
  ’Midst the fatigues that bear him down,
  In Hassan’s woes forgets his own;
  Yet cruel friends my wanderings chide,
  My sufferings slight, my toils deride.

  Once wealth, I own, engrossed each thought,
  There was a moment when I sought
  The glitt’ring stores Ambition claims
  To feed the wants his fancy frames;
  But now ’tis past—­the changing day
  Has snatch’d my high-built hopes away,
  And bade this wish my labors close—­
  Give me not riches, but repose. 
  ’Tis he—­that mien my friend declares,
  That stature, like the lance he bears;
  I see that breast which ne’er contain’d
  A thought by fear or folly stain’d,
  Whose powers can every change obey,
  In business grave, in trifles gay,
  And, form’d each varying taste to please,
  Can mingle dignity with ease.