Page:TheBirth of the War-God.djvu/49

Fickle to women Love perchance may bend
His ear to listen to a faithful friend.
Remember, lie walked ever at thy side
O'er bloomy meadows in the warm spring-tide,
That Gods above, and men, and fiends below
Should own the empire of thy mighty bow.
That ruthless bow, which pierces to the heart,
Strung with a lotus-thread, a flower its dart.
As dies a torch when winds sweep roughly by,
So is my light for ever fled, and I,
The lamp his cheering rays no more illume,
Am wrapt in darkness, misery, and gloom.
Fate took my love, and spared the widow's breath.
Yet fate is guilty of a double death ;
When the wild monster tramples on the ground
The tree some creeper garlands closely round,
Reft of the guardian which it thought so true,
Forlorn and withered, it must perish too.
Then come, dear friend, the true one's pile prepare,
And send me quickly to my husband there;
Call it not vain—the mourning Lotus dies
When the bright Moon, her lover, quits the skies;
When sinks the red cloud in the purple west,
Still clings his bride, the lightning, to his breast—
All nature keeps the eternal high decree.
Shall woman fail?—I come, my love, to thee!
Now on the pile my faint limbs will I throw.
Clasping his ashes—lovely even so,—
As if beneath my weary frame were spread
Soft leaves and blossoms for a flowery bed;
And oh, dear comrade (for in happier hours
Oft have I heaped a pleasant bed of flowers