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A blackness that revealeth naught,
A point alone that hath but place.
But when they reached the hateful shore,
Then was the unconscious respite o'er,
Then did her tortured bosom swell
With anguish wild, unutterable.
The market-place — O Gerda ! why
Wilt thou recall that agony ?
Nay, pass it o'er ! pass all those years
When day and night thy meat was tears —
Pass onward to the better hour
That freed thee from a tyrant's power,
And placed thee in young Maani's bower !
There gentle pity didst thou find
With her, the generous, true and kind.
Sweet Maani! through the Orient famed,
The fairest rose that e'er had birth
In far Circassia, meetly named
Mother of beauty for the earth —
Alas ! not hope that smiled before her,
