'Dim will our cabin be, and lone,
When thou, its light, art fled;

Yet hath thy step the pathway shown
Unto the happy dead.

"And we will follow thee, our guide!

And join that shining band;

Thou'rt passing from the lake's green side-
Go to the better land!"

The song had ceased-the listeners caught no breath :
That lovely sleep had melted into death.

THE INDIAN CITY.1

"What deep wounds ever closed without a sear?
The heart's bleed longest, and but heal to wear
That which disfigures it.'

I.

ROYAL in splendour went down the day
On the plain where an Indian city lay,

With its crown of domes o'er the forest high,
Red, as if fused in the burning sky;

Childe Harold.

And its deep groves pierced by the rays which made
A bright stream's way through each long arcade,
Till the pillared vaults of the banian stood
Like torch-lit aisles midst the solemn wood;
And the plantain glittered with leaves of gold,
As a tree midst the genii gardens old,

And the cypress lifted a blazing spire,

And the stems of the cocoas were shafts of fire.
Many a white pagoda's gleam

Slept lovely round upon lake and stream,

Broken alone by the lotus flowers,

As they caught the glow of the sun's last hours,

Like rosy wine in their cups, and shed

Its glory forth on their crystal bed.

Many a graceful Hindoo maid,

With the water-vase from the palmy shade,
Came gliding light as the desert's roe,
Down marble steps, to the tanks below;
And a cool sweet plashing was ever heard,
As the molten glass of the wave was stirred,
And a murmur, thrilling the scented air,
Told where the Bramin bowed in prayer.
-There wandered a noble Moslem boy
Through the scene of beauty in breathless joy?
He gazed where the stately city rose,
Like a pageant of clouds, in its red repose;

1 From a tale in Forbes's Oriental Memoirs.

He turned where birds through the gorgeous gloom
Of the woods went glancing on starry plume;
He tracked the brink of the shining lake,
By the tall canes feathered in tuft and brake;
Till the path he chose, in its mazes, wound
To the very heart of the holy ground.

And there lay the water, as if enshrined
In a rocky urn, from the sun and wind,
Bearing the hues of the grove on high,
Far down through its dark still purity.
The flood beyond, to the fiery west,
Spread out like a metal mirror's breast;
But that lone bay, in its dimness deep,
Seemed made for the swimmer's joyous leap,
For the stag athirst from the noontide's chase
For all free things of the wild wood's race.

Like a falcon's glance on the wide blue sky,
Was the kindling flash of the boy's glad eye;
Like a sea-bird's flight to the foaming wave,
From the shadowy bank was the bound he gave ;
Dashing the spray-drops, cold and white,
O'er the glossy leaves in its young delight,
And bowing his locks to the waters clear-
Alas! he dreamt not that fate was near

His mother looked from her tent the while,
O'er heaven and earth with a quiet smile :
She, on her way unto Mecca's fane,

Had stayed the march of her pilgrim train,
Calmly to linger a few brief hours

In the Bramin city's glorious bowers ;

For the pomp of the forest, the wave's bright fall, The red gold of sunset-she loved them all.

II.

The moon rose clear in the splendour given
To the deep-blue night of an Indian heaven;
The boy from the high-arched woods came back-—

Oh! what had he met in his lonely track?

The serpent's glance through the long reeds bright?
The arrowy spring of the tiger's might?
No! yet as one by a conflict worn,

With his graceful hair all soiled and torn,

And a gloom on the lids of his darkened eye,
And a gash on his bosom-he came to die!

He looked for the face to his young heart sweet,
And found it, and sank at his mother's feet.

"Speak to me! whence does the swift blood run? What hath befallen thee, my child, my son?"

The mist of death on his brow lay pale,
But his voice just lingered to breathe the tale,
Murmuring faintly of wrongs and scorn.

And wounds from the children of Brahma borne.
This was the doom for a Moslem found
With a foot profane on their holy ground-
This was for sullying the pure waves, free
Unto them alone-'twas their god's decree.

A change came o'er his wandering look—
The mother shrieked not then nor shook :
Breathless she knelt in her son's young blood,
Rending her mantle to staunch its flood;
But it rushed like a river which none may stay,
Bearing a flower to the deep away.

That which our love to the earth would chain,
Fearfully striving with heaven in vain-
That which fades from us while yet we hold,
Clasped to our bosoms, its mortal mould,
Was fleeting before her, afar and fast;

One moment-the soul from the face had passed!
Are there no words for that common woe?
Ask of the thousands its depth that know!
The boy had breathed, in his dreaming rest,
Like a low-voiced dove, on her gentle breast;

He had stood, when she sorrowed, beside her knee,
Painfully stilling his quick heart's glee;

He had kissed from her cheek the widow's tears,
With the loving lip of his infant years:

He had smiled o'er her path like a bright spring day-
Now in his blood on the earth he lay!

Murdered! Alas! and we love so well

In a world where anguish like this can dwell!

She bowed down mutely o'er her dead-
They that stood round her watched in dread;
They watched-she knew not they were by-
Her soul sat veiled in its agony.

On the silent lips she pressed no kiss

Too stern was the grasp of her pangs for this:
She shed no tear, as her face bent low
O'er the shining hair of the lifeless brow;
She looked but into the half-shut eye
With a gaze that found there no reply,
And, shrieking, mantled her head from sight,
And fell, struck down by her sorrow's might.

And what deep change, what work of power,
Was wrought on her secret soul that hour?
How rose the lonely one? She rose
Like a prophetess from dark repose !
And proudly flung from her face the veil,

And shook the hair from her forehead pale,
And midst her wondering handmaids stood,
With the sudden glance of a dauntless mood-
Ay, lifting up to the midnight sky

A brow in its regal passion high,

With a close and rigid grasp she pressed
The blood-stained robe to her heaving breast,
And said "Not yet, not yet I weep,

Not yet my spirit shall sink or sleep!
Not till yon city, in ruins rent,
Be piled for its victim's monument.
Cover his dust! bear it on before!

It shall visit those temple gates once more."

And away in the train of the dead she turned,
The strength of her step was the heart that burned;
And the Bramin groves in the starlight smiled,
As the mother passed with her slaughtered child.

Hark! a wild sound of the desert's horn
Through the woods round the Indian city borne,
A peal of the cymbal and tambour afar-
War! 'tis the gathering of Moslem war!

The Bramin looked from the leaguered towers-
He saw the wild archer amidst his bowers;

And the lake that flashed through the plaintain shade,
As the light of the lances along it played;

And the canes that shook as if winds were high,
When the fiery steed of the waste swept by;
And the camp as it lay like a billowy sea,
Wide round the sheltering banian-tree.

There stood one tent from the rest apart-
That was the place of a wounded heart.
Oh! deep is a wounded heart, and strong
A voice that cries against mighty wrong;
And full of death as a hot wind's blight,
Doth the ire of a crushed affection light.

Maimuna from realm to realm had passed,
And her tale had rung like a trumpet's blast.
There had been words from her pale lips poured,
Each one a spell to unsheath the sword.
The Tartar had sprung from his steed to hear,
And the dark chief of Araby grasped his spear,
Till a chain of long lances begirt the wall,
And a vow was recorded that doomed its fall.
Back with the dust of her son she came,

When her voice had kindled that lightning flame
She came in the might of a queenly foe,
Banner, and javelin, and bended bow;

;

But a deeper power on her forehead sate-
There sought the warrior his star of fate :
Her eye's wild flash through the tented line
Was hailed as a spirit and a sign,

And the faintest tone from her lip was caught
As a sybil's breath of prophetic thought.
-Vain, bitter glory!-the gift of grief,
That lights up vengeance to find relief,
Transient and faithless! it cannot fill
So the deep void of the heart, nor still
The yearning left by a broken tie,
That haunted fever of which we die!

Sickening she turned from her sad renown,
As a king in death might reject his crown.
Slowly the strength of the walls gave way-
She withered faster from day to day;
All the proud sounds of that bannered plain,
To stay the flight of her soul were vain;
Like an eagle caged, it had striven, and worn
The frail dust, ne'er for such conflicts born,
Till the bars were rent, and the hour was come
For its fearful rushing through darkness home.
The bright sun set in his pomp and pride,
As on that eve when the fair boy died:
She gazed from her couch, and a softness fell
O'er her weary heart with the day's farewell;
She spoke, and her voice, in its dying tone,
Had an echo of feelings that long seemed flown.
She murmured a low sweet cradle-song,
Strange midst the din of a warrior throng-
A song of the time when her boy's young cheek
Had glowed on her breast in its slumber meek.

But something which breathed from that mournful strain
Sent a fitful gust o'er her soul again ;

And starting, as if from a dream, she cried—

"Give him proud burial at my side!

There, by yon lake, where the palm-boughs wave,

When the temples are fallen, make there our grave."
And the temples fell, though the spirit passed,

That stayed not for victory's voice at last;
When the day was won for the martyr dead,

For the broken heart and the bright blood shed.

Through the gates of the vanquished the Tartar steed Bore in the avenger with foaming speed;

Free swept the flame through the idol fanes,

And the streams glowed red, as from warrior veins ;
And the sword of the Moslem, let loose to slay,
Like the panther leapt on its flying prey,

Till a city of ruin begirt the shade

Where the boy and his mother at rest were laid.