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And sighed MANDALLA to think that sinħsib » A Could dwell so fair a shrine within. bose dr "Oh, grief to think that she is one "Who like the breeze is wooed and won! "Yet sure it were a task for love

"To come like dew of the night from above

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Upon her heart, and wash away,

"Like dust from the flowers, its stain of clay, "And win her back in her tears to heaven, "Pure, loved, and humble, and forgiven: "Yes! freed from the soil of her earthly thrall, "Her smile shall light up my starry hall!"

The moonlight is on a little bower,

With wall and with roof of leaf and of flower,
Built of that green and holy tree

Which heeds not how rude the storm may be.
Like a bridal canopy overhead

The jasmines their slender wreathings spread,
One with stars as ivory white,

The other with clusters of amber light;
Rose-trees four grew by the wall,
Beautiful each, but different all:

One with that pure but crimson flush
That marks the maiden's first love blush;

By its side grew another one,

Pale as the snow of the funeral stone;
The next was rich with the damask dye
Of a monarch's purple drapery;

And the last had leaves like those leaves of gold
Worked on that drapery's royal fold.

And there were four vases, with blossoms filled,
Like censers of incense, their fragrance distilled;
Lilies, heaped like the pearls of the sea,
Peeped from their large leaves' security;
Hyacinths with their graceful bells,
Where the spirit of odour dwells

Like the spirit of music in ocean shells;
And tulips, with every colour that shines
In the radiant gems of Serendib's mines:
One tulip was found in every wreath,

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That one most scorched by the summer's breath,
Whose passionate leaves with their ruby glow
Hide the heart that lies burning and black below...
And there, beneath the flowered shade
By a pink acacia made,

MANDALLA lay; and by his side,
With eye and breath and blush that vied
With the star and with the flower
In their own and loveliest hour,
Was that fair Bayadere, the dove
Yet nestling in her long black hair :
She has now more than that to love,
And the loved one sat by her there.
And by the sweet acacia porch

They drank the softness of the breeze.-
Oh, more than lovely are love's dreams,
'Mid lights and blooms and airs like these!
And sometimes she would leave his side,
And like a spirit round him glide:

A light shawl now wreathed round her brow,
Now waving from her hand of snow,
Now zoned around her graceful waist,
And now like fetters round her placed;
And then, flung suddenly aside,
Her many curls, instead, unbound,
Waved in fantastic braids, till loosed,
Her long dark tresses swept the grouud;
Then, changing from the soft slow step,
Her white feet bounded on the wind
Like gleaming silver, and her hair,

Like a dark banner, swept behind;
Or with her sweet voice, sweet like a bird's
When it pours forth its first song in spring,
The one like an echo to the other,

She answered the sigh of her soft lute-string;"
And with eyes that darkened in gentlest tears,
Like the dewy light in the dark-eyed dove,
Would she sing those sorrowing songs that breathe
Some history of unhappy love.

"Yes, thou art mine!" MANDALLA said:

"I have lighted up love in thy youthful heart; "I taught thee its tenderness, now I must teach "Its faith, its grief, and its gloomier part; "And then, from thy earth-stains purified, "In my star and my hall shalt thou reign my bride."

It was an evening soft and fair,
As surely those in Eden are,

When, bearing spoils of leaf and flower,
Entered the Bayadere her bower;
Her love lay sleeping, as she thought,
And playfully a bunch she caught
Of azure hyacinth bells, and o'er

His face she let the blossoms fall: "Why I am jealous of thy dreams, "Awaken at thy Aza's call."

No answer came from him whose tone
Had been the echo of her own.

She spoke again,-no words came forth;
She clasped his hand,-she raised his head,-
One wild loud scream, she sank beside,

As pale, as cold, almost as dead!

By the Ganges raised, for the morning sun
To shed his earliest beams upon,

Is a funeral pile,-around it stand
Priests and the hired mourners' band.
But who is she that so wildly prays
To share the couch and light the blaze?
MANDALLA's love, while scornful eye
And chilling jeers mock her agony :
An Alma girl? oh shame, deep shame,
To Brahma's race and Brahma's name!
Unmarked, unpitied, she turned 'aside,
For a moment her bursting tears to hide.
None thought of the Bayadere, till the fire
Blazed redly and fiercely the funeral pyre;
Then like a thought she darted by,
And sprang on the burning pile to die!

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"Now thou art mine! away, away
"To my own bright Star, to my home of Day,"
A dear voice sighed, as he bore her along
Gently as spring breezes bear the song,
"Thy love and thy faith have won for thee
"The breath of immortality.

"Maid of earth, MANDALLA is free to call
"Aza the queen of his heart and hall!”

1

STANZAS.

Ah! marvel not that wild the eye
Which looks its last on you,
Nor deem it strange that deep the sigh
Which echoes thy adieu.

You tell me, friends conspire to break
Our fond heart-linking tie-
You tell me, duty bids us wake
From fatal lethargy.

And yet you oft have talk'd of love,
And promis'd to be mine:
Ah, am I destin'd then, to prove
A heart so fickle, thine?

Say, is it by thy love's decay,

That we are rent in twain?
Or is it, that thou must obey,
Howe'er it give thee pain?
Well, thou wilt soon forget thy care,
And think no more of me,
And I will go, I care not where,
It must be far from thee!

Perchance to mingle with the gay,
And act the trifler's part,

And reckless seem as light as they,
With anguish at my heart.
Then marvel not that wild the eye,
Which looks its last on you,

Nor deem it strange that deep the sigh
Which echoes thy adieu."

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THE ROOM THAT NEVER WAS USED.

A RECOLLECTION OF CHILDHOOD.

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Charles Lamb has, with masterly hand, graphically pourtrayed the innate terrors of childhood: his delightful sketch, as I recently read it, coming completely home to my recollected ideas, feelings, and experiences, induced me to try if I could not make out a chapter of my own on the subject; and, without further preamble, here it is:

66

A feeble, highly nervous constitution, and what Washington Irving would style a haunted head," were the banes of my early existence; the sight of a mask, even though I beheld a person put it on, nearly sent me into fits; and the report of a gun, half terrified my soul from my body; I trembled (a species of nervousness to which I plead guilty even now), to turn over the leaves of a book, with whose plates I was unacquainted, for fear of coming to something frightful; and the representation of a skeleton, or volcanic eruption, would make me thrill with terror, not merely for hours afterwards, but whenever my eye fell on the alarming volume. I need not hint my dread of going about in the dark; that fear attaches to children less nervous than I happened to be; but houses there were (and one of these I am about to describe), old fashioned, large, rumbling, and lonely, into whose remote apartments I never willingly ventured, except with a companion, even in broad daylight.

Had I been asked the causes of those thousand and one terrors which made the perplexing, nameless misery of my childhood, I could not have told; and, had I been, to use a favourite metonymy of my nurse-maid, “flayed alive," for this distressing timidity, the treatment, less cruel than the disease, would not have exorcised it from my "nervous system;" such terrors being, in fact, as involuntary as indefinite.

My grandmother, on the paternal side, lived, as far back as I can recollect, in an old house, in an old city; under its roof I was born (though my residence was elsewhere in the same city), and this antique mansion, with its old-fashioned L. 37.2.

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