A paradise you say,
Stretching away—and endlessly away!—
A garden—lovelily abloom
With rice and silk and tea,
Cotton and yam and wheat, all fair to see,
And breathing forth an exquisite perfume
Of mingled mulberry and orange-blows,
Azalea and rose:
A garden, yet a tomb
Where myriads, sleeping, are remembered still
By myriads more, who glad their precepts keep,
And honour them in sleep.
What centuries of industry speak here!
What irrigating waters, silver-clear,
Skirting the uplands, rise, tier above tier!
What thronged canals, through the Delta plain extending
Hundreds of miles!
What junks, what bankside villages unending,
What cottages with brown and green roof-tiles!
What fanes! what wildwood temples without cease!
What unperturbed tranquility! what peace!
Far off there is a realm of wonder,—
Know you its name?
No region the wide heavens under
