Oriental Scenes, Dramatic Sketches and Tales/The Dying Hindoo
THE DYING HINDOO.
He lies beside the sacred river,
His heart has lost life's ruddy glow,
His sighs are faint, his pulses quiver,
And death's chill damps are on his brow.
Within yon green and bowery glade
Whose path the smile of sunshine wears,
Beneath the lofty palm tree's shade
His loved though lowly hut appears.
And near him well known sounds arise
With joyous songs and laughter fraught,
And now his glazed and languid eyes
Are turned towards the village-ghaut.
There all is cheerful, as of yore,
When with the sun's declining beam
He too had sought the Ganges' shore,
And bathed within its hallowed stream.
In crouds his early friends repair
To the chabouta's esplanade,
Her graceful ghurrah filling there,
Stoops to the brink his dark-eyed maid.
They heed him not—no fond farewells
Attest their grief, no tears are shed,
No sigh the heart's deep anguish tells;
He to the living world is dead.
One pang has shot across his breast—
One human pang—but it is gone,
And tranquilly he sinks to rest,
As the eternal wave flows on.
His eye the blushing wreath has caught
Which floats along the sacred wave,
And to his parting soul has brought
Hopes of bright lands beyond the grave.
Soon shall the form o'er that pure tide
Which now to earth so fondly clings,
Freed from each grovelling trammel glide,
And mingle with its holy springs.
The red crown of the lotus wreath
Upon the molten silver blushes,
And a dark, lifeless form beneath
With the stream's headlong current rushes.
The corse, the flower are seen no more,
For ever lost in yon bright river,
The echoes of the lonely shore
In mournful tones repeat—for ever!