Literary Gazette 13th September 1823, Page 585
ORIGINAL POETRY.
THE BAYADERE.—PART III.
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 over head
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.
Three or 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,
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.
