Peri

Western representations

In Thomas Moore's poem "Paradise and the Peri," part of his Lalla Rookh, a peri gains entrance to heaven after three attempts at giving an angel the gift most dear to God. The first attempt is "The last libation Liberty draws/From the heart that bleeds and breaks in her cause," a drop of blood from a young soldier killed for an attempt on the life of Mahmud of Ghazni. Next is a "Precious sigh/of pure, self-sacrificing love": a sigh stolen from the dying lips of a maiden who died with her lover of bubonic plague in the Mountains of the Moon (Rwenzori Mountains) rather than surviving in exile from the disease and the lover. The third gift, the one that gets the peri into heaven, is a "Tear that, warm and meek/Dew'd that repentant sinner's cheek": the tear of an evil old man who repented upon seeing a child praying in the ruins of the Temple of Zeus at Baalbek. Robert Schumann set Moore's tale to music as an oratorio, Paradise and the Peri, using an abridged German translation.