THE INDIAN CITY.*

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

Childe Harold.

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,

And its deep groves pierced by the rays which made

A bright stream's way thro' each long arcade,

Till the pillar'd vaults of the Banian stood,

Like torch-lit aisles midst the solemn wood,

*From a tale in Forbes' Oriental Memoirs.

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 molten 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

Thro' 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 thro' the gorgeous gloom
Of the woods went glancing on starry plume;
He track'd 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 enshrin'd
In a rocky urn from the sun and wind,
Bearing the hues of the grove on high,
Far down thro' 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 lov'd 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-arch'd woods came back--
Oh! what had he met in his lonely track?

The serpent's glance, thro' 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 soil'd and torn,
And a gloom on the lids of his darken'd

eye,

And a gash on his bosom-he came to die!
He look'd for the face to his young heart sweet,
And found it, and sank at his mother's feet.

"Speak to me !—whence doth the swift blood run? What hath befall'n thee, my child, my son?"

The mist of death on his brow lay pale,

But his voice just linger'd to breathe the tale,
Murmuring faintly of wrongs and scorn,

And wounds from the children of Brahma born :