Rememberest thou the hour we past,--
That hour the happiest and the last?
Oh! not so sweet the Siha thorn
To summer bees at break of morn,
Not half so sweet, thro' dale and dell,
To Camels' ears the tinkling bell,
As is the soothing memory
Of that one precious hour to me.
How can we live, so far apart?
Oh! why not rather, heart to heart,
United live and die--
Like those sweet birds, that fly together,
With feather always touching feather,
Linkt by a hook and eye![5]
[1] I have made many inquiries about this Persian gentleman, but cannot
satisfactorily ascertain who he is. From his notions of Religious Liberty,
however, I conclude that he is an importation of Ministers; and he has
arrived just in time to assist the Prince and Mr. Leckie in their new
Oriental Plan of Reform.--See the second of these letters.--How Abdallah's
epistle to Ispahan found its way into the Twopenny Post-Bag is more than I
can pretend to account for.
[2] Sunnites and Shiites are the two leading sects into which the
Mahometan world is divided; and they have gone on cursing and persecuting
each other, without any intermission, for about eleven hundred years. The
_Sunni_ is the established sect in Turkey, and the _Shia_ in
Persia; and the differences between them turn chiefly upon those important
points, which our pious friend Abdallah, is the true spirit of Shiite
Ascendency, reprobates in this Letter.
[3] "In contradistinction to the Sounis, who in their prayers cross their
hands on the lower part of the breasts, the Schiahs drop their arms in
straight lines; and as the Sounis, at certain periods of the prayer, press
their foreheads on the ground or carpet, the Schiahs," etc.--_Forster's
Voyage_.
[4] "The Shiites wear green slippers, which the Sunnites consider as a
great abomination."--_Mariti_.
[5] This will appear strange to an English reader, but it is literally
translated from Abdallah's Persian, and the curious bird to which he
alludes is the _Juftak_, of which I find the following account in
Richardson:--"A sort of bird, that is said to have but one wing; on the
opposite side to which the male has a hook and the female a ring, so that,
when they fly, they are fastened together."