Now ranging its luxuriant banks of green,
In silent rapture gaze upon the scene:
His graceful arms the palm was waving there,
Caught in the tall acacia's tangled hair,
While in festoons across his branches slung
The gay kossom in scarlet tassels hung;
The flowering colocynth had studded round
Jewels of promise o'er the joyful ground,
And where the smile of day burst on the stream,
The trembling waters glittered in the beam.

It comes, the blast of death! that sudden glare
Tinges with purple hues the stagnant air:
Fearful in silence, o'er the heaving strand
Sweeps the wild gale, and licks the curling sand,
While o'er the vast Sahara from afar

Rushes the tempest in his winged car:

Swift from their bed the flame-like billows rise
Whirling and surging to the copper skies,
As when Briareus lifts his hundred arms,
Grasps at high heaven, and fills it with alarms;
In eddying chaos madly mixt on high
Gigantic pillars dance along the sky,
Or stalk in awful slowness through the gloom,
Or track the coursers of the dread simoom,
Or clashing in mid air, to ruin hurled,

Fall as the fragments of a shattered world!

Hushed is the tempest,

desolate the plain,

Stilled are the billows of that troubled main;

come, in color like the purple part of a rainbow, &c., a kind of blush upon the air, a meteor, or purple haze."

* Στρόμβοι δὲ κόνιν εἰλίσσουσι

Esch. Prom. v. 1091.

↑ Bruce (as above). "We were here at once surprised and terrified by a sight surely one of the most magnificent in the world. In that vast expanse of desert, from W. to N. W. of us, we saw a number of prodigious pillars of sand, at times moving with great celerity, at others stalking on with a majestic slowness; at intervals we thought they were coming in a few minutes to overwhelm us, &c Sometimes they were broken near the middle, as if struck with a huge cannon-shot." See also Golasmith's An. Nat. vəl. 1.. p. 363.

As if the voice of death had checked the storm,
Each sandy wave retains its sculptured form:
And all is silence, save the distant blast

That howled, and mocked the desert as it passed;
And all is solitude, for where are they,
That o'er Sahara wound their toilsome way?
Ask of the heavens above, that smile serene,
Ask that burnt spot, no more of lovely green,
Ask of the whirlwind in its purple cloud,
The desert is their grave, the sand their shroud.

THE SUTTEES.

SYNOPSIS.

The natural beauty of Hindostan contrasted with its moral depravity. — Approach of a funeral procession. - Hymn of the Brahmins. The widow. Her early history. — The scene of the funeral pile.-Enthusiastic feelings of the vicum. - The pile is fired. Address to British benevolence in behalf of the benighted Hindoos.

O GOLDEN Shores, primeval home of man,

How glorious is thy dwelling, Hindostan!

Thine are these smiling valleys, bright with bloom,
Wild woods, and sandal-groves, that breathe perfume,
Thine, these fair skies, where morn's returning ray,
Has swept the starry robe of night away,†
And gilt each dome, and minaret, and tower,
Gemmed every stream and tinted every flower.
But dark the spirit within thee; -- from old time
Still o'er thee rolls the wheeling flood of crime,

Denham and Clapp., i 16. "The overpowering effect of a sudden sand-wind, when near the close of the desert, often destroys a whole kafila (caravan) already weakened by fatigue, &c "-- and p. 63 — The winds scorch as they pass; and bring with them billows of sand, rolling along in masses frightfully suffocating, which sometimes swallow up whole caravans and armies."

1 Asch. Promn. v. 24. ποικιλείμων νύξ, and Orph. Argon 1026, αστροχίτων νύξ.

Still o'er thee broods the curse of guiltless blood.
That shouts for vengeance from thy reeking sod;
Deep-flowing Ganges in his rushy bed

Moans a sad requiem for his children dead,
And, wafted frequent on the passing gale,
Rises the orphan's sigh, the widow's wail.
Hark, tis the rolling of the funeral drum,

The white-robed Brahimins see, they come, they come,
Bringing, with frantic shouts, and torch, and trump,
And mingled signs of melancholy pomp,
That livid corpse, borne solemnly on high-
And yon faint trembling victim, doomed to die.

Still, as with measured step they move along,
With fiercer joy they weave the mystic song;
Eswara,* crowned with forests, thee they praise,
Birmah, to thee the full-toned chorus raise;

To ocean, - where the loose sail mariners furl,
And seek in coral caves the virgin pearl,
And to the source of Ganga's sacred streams,
Bright with the gold of Surya's morning beams,
Where on her lotus-throne Varuna sings,
And weeping Peris lave their azure wings:
They shout to Kali, of the red right hand,
Bid Aglys toss on high the kindled brand,
And far from Himalaya's frozen steep,
In whirlwind car, bid dark Paváneh sweep;
They chant of one whom Azrael waits to guide
O'er the black gulf of death's unfathomed tide;
Of her, whose spotless life to Seeva given,
Bursts for her lord the golden gates of heaven,
Of her, who thus in dreadful triumph led,
Dares the unhallowed bridal of the dead!

• Eswara, goddess of Nature. Surya, the sun. Varuna, a water-nymph. Peris, of spirits of a certain grade, are excluded from paradise, from a gate of which Ganges flows Kali, goddess of murder Aglys, god of fire. Pavaneh, of wind. See Mau rice's Indian Antiquities.

And there in silent fear she stands alone,
The desolate, unpitied, widowed one:

Too deeply taught in life's sad tale of grief,
In the calm house of death she hopes relief;
For few the pleasures India's daughter knows,
A child of sorrow, nursed in want and woes.
Curst from the womb, how oft a mother's fear
In silence o'er thee dropt the bitter tear,
Lest a stern sire to Ganga's holy wave
Should madly consecrate the life he gave:
Cradled on superstition's sable wing

In joyless gloom passed childhood's early spring,

And still, as budded fair thy youthful mind,

None bade thee seek, none taught thee, truth to find;

Poor child! that never raised the suppliant prayer,

Nor looked to heaven and saw a Father there.

Untutored by religion's gentle sway

To love, believe, be happy, and obey,

Betrothed in artless infancy to one

Thy warm affections never beamed upon,

How should'st thou smile, when ripe in beauty's pride
The haughty Rajah claimed his destined bride?

A trembling slave, and not the loving wife,
Passed the short summer of thy hapless life; *
And now to deck that bier, that pile to crown; t
His fiery sepulchre becomes-thine own.

And must it be, that in a spot so fair

Shall rise the madden'd shriek of wild despair?
The lovely spot, where glows in every part
The smile of nature on the pomp of art;
The banian spreads its hospitable shade,
The bright bird warbles in the leafy glade,
The matted palm, and wild anana's bloom,
The light pagoda, the majestic dome,

On the miserable state of woman in India, see Ward on Hindostan, Letter vi. In p 96 ne says, "between eight and nine hundred widows are burnt every year in the Presidency of Bengal alone! 1818"

↑ Capt. Marr's Picture of India, p. 235.

With emerald plains, and ocean's distant blue,
Cast their rich tints and shadows o'er the view.
But murder here must wash his bloody hand,
And superstition shake the flaming brand,
And terror cast around an eager eye

To look for one to save, where none is nigh!
Far other incense than the breath of day
From that dark corpse must waft the soul away,
Far other moans than of the muffled drum

Herald the lingering spirit to its home:

Yes, thou must perish; and that gentle frame
Must struggle frantic with the circling flame,
Constant in weal and woe, for death, for life,
The victim widow, as the victim wife.

Hoping, despairing, friendless, and forlorn,
The death she may not fly, she strives to scorn:
Lists to the tale that bright-winged Peris wait
To waft her to Kalaisa's erystal gate,

Thinks how her car of fire shall speed along,
Hailed by high praises, and Kinnura's song,-
And upward gazing in a speechless trance,
Darts earnestly the keen ecstatic glance,
Till rapt imagination cleaves the sky,
And hope delusive points the way — to die.

Who hath not felt, in some celestial bour,

When fear's dark thunder-clouds have ceased to lower
When angels beckon on the fluttering soul
To realms of bliss beyond her mortal goal,
When heavenly glories bursting on the sight,
The raptured spirit bathes in seas of light,
And soars aloft upon the seraph's wing, -
How boldly she can brave death's tyrant sting?
Thus the poor girl's enthusiastic mind

Revels in hope of blessings undefined,

Roams o'er the flowers of earth, the joys of sense
And frames her paradise of glory thence:

Kalaisa, the Indian heaven. Kinnura, the heavenly singer.