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

THE INDIAN CITY.*

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

Childe Harold.

I.

ROYAL in splendor 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,

And its deep groves pierced by the rays which made
A bright stream's way through each long arcade,

* From a tale in Forbes's Oriental Memoirs.

Till the pillar'd vaults of the banian stood,
Like torch-lit aisles 'midst the solemn wood,

And the plantain glitter'd 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 moulten glass of the wave was stirr'd;
And a murmur, thrilling the scented air,
Told where the Bramin bow'd 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;

He turn'd where birds through the gorgeous gloom
Of the woods went glancing on starry plume;
He track'd the brink of the shining lake,
By the tall canes feather'd 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 the 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,
Seem'd made for the swimmer's joyous leap,
For the stag athirst from the noontide 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 his young delight,
And bowing his locks to the waters clear—
Alas! he dreamt not that fate was near.

His mother look'd from her tent the while,
O'er heaven and earth with a quiet smile :
She, on her way unto Mecca's fane,
Had stay'd 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 splendor given
To the deep-blue night of an Indian heaven;
The boy from the high-arch'd woods came back-
Oh! what had he met in his lonely track?