"So they whose lot it was cast stones,
That they flew thick and bruised him sore:
But he praised Allah with loud voice,
And remained kneeling as before.
"My lord had covered up his face:
But, when one told him, 'He is dead;'
Turning him quickly to go in,
'Bring thou to me his corpse,' he said.
"And truly, while I speak, oh king,
I hear the bearers on the stair.
Wilt thou they straightway bring him in?--
Ho! enter ye who tarry there."--pp. 39-43.
The Vizier counsels the king that each man's private grief suffices
him, and that he should not seek increase of it in the griefs of
other men. But he answers him, (this passage we have before quoted,)
that the king's lot and the poor man's is the same, for that neither
has his will; and he takes order that the dead man be buried in his
own royal tomb.
We know few poems the style of which is more unaffectedly without
labor, and to the purpose, than this. The metre, however, of the
earlier part is not always quite so uniform and intelligible as might
be desired; and we must protest against the use, for the sake of
rhyme, of _broke_ in lieu of _broken_, as also of _stole_ for
_stolen_ in "the New Sirens." While on the subject of style, we may
instance, from the "Fragment of an Antigone," the following uncouth
stanza, which, at the first reading, hardly appears to be correctly
put together:
"But hush! Hoemon, whom Antigone,
Robbing herself of life in burying,
Against Creon's laws, Polynices,
Robs of a loved bride, pale, imploring,
Waiting her passage,
Forth from the palace hitherward comes.
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