Oriental Scenes, Dramatic Sketches and Tales/A Sketch
A SKETCH.
The fretted pannels gleamed with gold,
And gorgeous shewed that stately room;
The silken curtain's ample fold
Shone with the dyes of Persia's loom.
And there lay harp and lyre and lute,
To waken music's sweetest strain,
But all in that sad hour were mute—
Their witchery lost, their solace vain.
Without—the tall trees wooed the wind
Shading a smooth and spacious lawn,
And where the shrubs their branches twined,
Couched on the blossoms slept the fawn.
The wide verandah's colonnade
With rare and precious flowers was filled,
And every breeze that round them played
Their odorous scents in showers distilled.
The jasmines mantling wreaths were hung
Upon the trelliced arch, and high
The rose its rich red clusters flung
Mid that star-cinctured tapestry.
'Twas evening, and a silvery ray
Beamed from the bright and full orbed moon,
Which sailing on her heaven-ward way,
Shone broadly on that fair saloon.
The lattice wide, as if for air,
Was open thrown—and faint and weak,
A form was seen reposing there,
With eyelids closed and pallid cheek—
Upon a velvet couch she lay,
But not to her a couch of rest;
Her long dark hair in disarray,
Her white arms folded o'er her breast.
Amid the braided tresses shone
Pale flowers exhaling scented breath,
Like coronals we strew upon
The friend we lose by early death.
She was not dead who corse-like prest
That couch of care; but the moon's light
Ne'er could on one more heart-struck rest
Than her who caught the beam that night.
And there was one of gentle mood
Who watched that pale and prostrate form;
And as in musing grief she stood
And marked the wreck of one wild storm,
She fancied that the moon looked down
With pitying eye upon the bed,
Where like a lily overthrown
The smitten mourner drooped her head.
It was an idle thought—yet still
The dream the pensive mind beguiled,
But that same moon o'er yon green hill
Looked down on other scenes and smiled.—
Oh! fair and false—a beam of light
On misery's thorny couch she throws,
Then faithless turns a ray as bright
Where hope and joy and health repose.