58
THE IMPROVISATRICE.
Yet the guests are all bidden, the feast is the same,
And the bride plights her troth amid smoke and 'mid flame!
They have raised the death-pyre of sweet-scented wood,
And sprinkled it o'er with the sacred flood
Of the Ganges. The priests are assembled:—their song
Sinks deep on the ear as they bear her along,
That bride of the dead. Ay, is not this love?—
That one pure, wild feeling all others above:
Vowed to the living, and kept to the tomb!—
The same in its blight as it was in its bloom.
With no tear in her eye, and no change in her smile,
Young Zaide had come nigh to the funeral pile.
The bells of the dancing-girls ceased from their sound;
Silent they stood by that holiest mound.
