And still we gaze,

and gaze, and yearn, And, with mysterious pinings, feel The soul-perchance your offspring-burn

For what your voices can reveal ! Mute-mute--ye from your height survey

Our longings vague, our visions vain; And, drawn to earth, we turn away,

And sicken to ourselves again.

Still linger in the vast abode,
Where once the Magian learning glowed
Fond dreamers wild and self-deceiving,

Feeding strange thoughts in loneliness; And, in one empty science, weaving

The threads of each unhallowed guess. Gaunt Fast and sternest Penance joined To the great AwE, which is the soul

Or demon of all solitude,
Darken the fancies of their mind

Into a grim and gathering mood,
Till madness blackens o'er the whole.

Such is the stuff from which is made

The mould of those in half-lit climes, Whom hooded millions have obeyed,

Drunk with the lust of fire and scathe,

And mailed to mercy by a faith, That

sprung from Phrensy's densest shade,

A madness modell’d to a trade,

And grown a creed by crimes !

To one of these wild seers the Twins

Are bound, and ere the earliest ray
Of the New Moon* her reign begins,

Behold them on their unwatch'd way.

They pass d along by the Menam's side,
With its floating streetst on the twilight tide,
And laughter and voices echoed afar
From the idle groups in the gilt bazaar ;
But the clear smooth note ’mid the din they distinguish,
Of the cunning Chinese who are cheating the English.

They have left the city behind them now;

And, along the gladden'd ground,
There stealeth a scent from each purple bough,

In the thousand orchards round. I
O'er the thin, frail plank, that the deep canal

Bridges, they gliding go ;

And the maw of the crocodile waits their fall,

As he watcheth them from below. For two-and-twenty comely fanes

In sight, the wealth of the town bespeak ; But the purse of the burgher-man never contains

Enough for a bridge o'er a single creek.* The night hath advanced ; and the sharp, shrill cry

Of the geckot breaks forth from the herbage dark ; And out, o'er the hush of the breathless sky,

Sweeps the Moon in her stately bark, They see (in Siam a frequent sight

A drollish sort of a constitution hers!) A robber, who should have been hang'd that night,

Walking coolly off with his executioners. I

In the heart of the plain they have past, and there

The moon on a temple shone,
And they note a Chinese with his braided hair,

By some embers employ'd alone :
He was stirring up the bones of his sire,

With a tool like a gardener's prong;
He had burnt him that day by a famous fire,

And was closing his task with a cheerful song.*

They have gone many miles since the night begun,
And the mystic moon to her height hath won.
They pause by the jaws of a tangled wood,
For gloomily there the shadows brood,
And they thought how the tigers in search of food
From the distant forest had lately strayed,
--And they looked on each other, and mutely prayed.

Prah-klang, took this opportunity to effect his escape. The mode in which he accomplished this, afforded some insight into the character of the servants of the Siamese government. The robber seduced the whole guard, and walked off with them ; thus not only effecting his own escape, but taking with him an armed and organized body of depredators.” -Crauford's Embassy, p. 176.

Returning home one day from an excursion on the Menam, my attention was attracted by observing a Chinese all alone stirring up some embers within the enclosures of a temple, with an instrument resembling a pitchfork. On landing, we found that he was completing the funeral rights of some relative. He was stirring the fire to complete the destruction of some of the larger bones, and was either cheering or consoling himself with a song !"-Crauford's Embassy, p. 450.