Speed toward us, speed, O days so joyous! 
     Even if blood your cost be reckoned;
     Speed as in Heaven’s gracious favor,
     Bringing again Heaven’s earthly kingdom. 
     Yea, though through waters deep we struggle,
     Joining in fight with seas of troubles. 
     Suffer we, bear we—­hope—­be silent! 
     On us shall dawn a coming daybreak—­
     With it, the world of men be happy!

Translated in the metre of the original, by E. Irenaeus Stevenson, for the (World’s Best Literature)

     SLIGHTED LOVE

     AN ORIENTAL ROMANCE

     Splendid rose the star of evening, and the gray dusk was
               a-fading. 
     O’er it with a hand of mildness, now the Night her veil was
               drawing: 
     Abensaid, valiant soldier, from Medina’s ancient gateway,
     To the meadows, rich with blossoms, walked in darkest mood of
               musing—­
     Where the Guadalete’s wild waves foaming wander through the
               flat lands,
     Where, within the harbor’s safety, loves to wait the weary seaman. 
     Neither hero’s mood nor birth-pride eased his spirit of its suffering
     For his youth’s betrothed, Zobeide; she it was who caused him
               anguish. 
     Faithless had she him forsaken, she sometime his best-beloved,
     Left him, though already parted by strange fate, from realm and
               heirship. 
     Oh, that destiny he girds not—­strength it gave him, hero-courage,
     Added to his lofty spirit, touches of nobler feeling—­
     ’Tis that she, ill-starred one, leaves him! takes the hand so
               wrinkled
     Of that old man, Seville’s conqueror! 
     Into the night, along the river, Abensaid now forth rushes: 
     Loudly to the rocky limits, Echo bears his lamentations. 
     “Faithless maid, more faithless art thou than the sullen water! 
     Harder thou than even the hardened bosom of yon rigid rockwall! 
     Ah, bethinkest thou, Zobeide, still upon our solemn love-oath? 
     How thy heart, this hour so faithless, once belonged to me, me only? 
     Canst thou yield thy heart, thy beauty, to that old man, dead to
               love-thoughts? 
     Wilt thou try to love the tyrant lacking love despite his treasure? 
     Dost thou deem the sands of desert higher than are virtue—­
               honor? 
     Allah grant, then, that he hate thee!  That thou lovest yet
               another! 
     That thou soon thyself surrender to the scorned one’s bitter feeling. 
     Rest may night itself deny thee, and may day to thee be terror! 
     Be thy face before thy husband as a thing of nameless loathing! 
     May his eye avoid thee ever, flee the splendor of thy beauty! 
     May he ne’er, in gladsome gathering, stretch his hand to thee for