Northward, he dream’d, in Judah’s vine-clad hills,

of gold and gems, earth’s jealous-hoarded flower,

garner’d within Jehovah’s temple-sills:

and sterile wisdom crown’d his brow with power.

Where burnt Arabia, named the Happy, spills

above the silken seas that gird her bower

rich heat of spice her chymic sun distils,

she dwelt, and lonely beauty was her dower.

The desert lay between them; yet they knew

each one of each, and love and longing grew:

she came: and desert blossom’d where she came.

And now their tale beguiles a wandering race

where, parch’d by the hard sun’s indifferent flame,

one yellow desert billows o’er their place.