Was fleeting before her, afar and fast—
—One moment—the soul from the face had pass'd.
Are there no words for that common woe?
—Ask of the thousands its depths that know!
The boy had breathed in his dreaming rest,
Like a low-voiced dove, on her gentle breast;
He had stood when she sorrow'd, beside her knee,
Painfully stilling his quick heart's glee;
He had kiss'd from her cheek the widow's tears,
With the loving lip of his infant years;
He had smiled o'er her path like a bright spring-day
Now in his blood on the earth he lay!
Murder’d!—Alas! and such woe can dwell
In a world where we fear not to love so well!
She bow'd down mutely o'er her dead—
They that stood round her watch'd in dread;
They watch'd—she knew not they were by,
Her soul sat veil'd in its agony.
On the silent lip she press'd no kiss,
Too stern was the grasp of her pangs for this;
She shed no tear, as her face bent low
O'er the shining hair of the lifeless brow!
She look'd but into the half-shut eye,
With a gaze that found there no reply,
And shrieking, mantled her head from sight,
And fell, struck down by her misery's might.
And what deep change, what work of power,
Was wrought on her secret soul that hour?
How rose the lonely one?—she rose
Like a prophetess from dark repose!
And proudly flung from her face the veil,
And shook the hair from her forehead pale,
And amidst her wondering handmaids stood,
With the sudden glance of a dauntless mood.
Aye, lifting up to the morn's clear sky,
A brow in its regal passion high,
With a close and rigid grasp she press'd
The blood-stain'd robe to her heaving breast,
And said—"Not yet—not yet I weep,
Not yet my spirit shall sink or sleep,
Not till yon city, in ruins rent,
Be piled for its victim's monument.
—Cover his dust, bear it on before!
It shall visit those temple-gates once more."
And away in the train of the dead she turn'd—
The strength of her step was the heart that burn'd,
And the Brahmin groves to the Orient smiled,
As the mother pass'd with her slaughter'd child.
3.
Hark! a wild sound of the Desert's horn
Through the woods round the Indian City borne,
A peal of the cymbal and tambour afar—
—War! 'tis the gathering of Moslem war!
The Brahmin look'd from the leaguer'd towers—
He saw the wild archer amidst his bowers;
And the lake that flash'd through the plantain shade,
As the light of the lances along it play'd;
And the canes that shook as if winds were high,
When the fiery steed of the waste swept by;
And the camp as it lay, like a billowy sea,
Wide round the sheltering banian tree.
