And, air-poised lightly as the blown sea-foam,

The marble wonder of some holy dome Hung a white moonrise over the still wood,

Glassing its beauty in a stiller flood.

Silent the monarch gazed, until the night

Swift-falling hid the city from his sight, Then to the woman at his feet he said: "Tell me, O Miriam, something tho hast read

In childhood of the Master of thy faith Whom Islam also owns. Our Prophe saith:

'He was a true apostle, yea, - a Word And Spirit sent before me from th Lord.'

Thus the Book witnesseth; and well know

By what thou art, O dearest, it is so. As the lute's tone the maker's hand

And her accusers fled his face before, He bade the poor one go and sin no

more.

And Akbar said, after a moment's

thought,

"Wise is the lesson by thy prophet taught;

Woe unto him who judges and forgets What hidden evil his own heart besets! Something of this large charity I find In all the sects that sever human kind; I would to Allah that their lives agreed More nearly with the lesson of their creed!

Those yellow Lamas who at Meerut pray

By wind and water power, and love to say:

'He who forgiveth not shall, unforgiven,

Fail of the rest of Buddha,' and who

423

Love-guided, to her home in a far land, Now waited death at the great Shah's command.

Shapely as that dark princess for whose smile

A world was bartered, daughter of the Nile

Herself, and veiling in her large, soft

eyes

The passion and the languor of her skies, The Abyssinian knelt low at the feet Of her stern lord: "O king, if it be meet,

And for thy honor's sake," she said, "that I,

Who am the humblest of thy slaves, should die,

I will not tax thy mercy to forgive.
Easier it is to die than to outlive
All that life gave me, -him whose
wrong of thee

Was but the outcome of his love for me, Cherished from childhood, when, beneath the shade

Of templed Axum, side by side we played.

Stolen from his arms, my lover followed

me

Through weary seasons over land and

sea;

And two days since, sitting disconsolate
Within the shadow of the hareem gate,
Suddenly, as if dropping from the sky,
Down from the lattice of the balcony
Fell the sweet song by Tigre's cow.
herds sung

In the old music of his native tongue.
He knew my voice, for love is quick
of ear,
Answering in song..

This night he waited near To fly with me. The fault was mine alone :

He knew thee not, he did but seek his own;

Who, in the very shadow of thy throne, Sharing thy bounty, knowing all tho

[Norembega, or Norimbegue, is the name given by early French fishermen and explorers to a fabulous country south of Cape Breton, first discovered by Verrazzani in 1524. It was supposed to have a magnificent city of the same name on a great river, probably the Penobscot. The site of this barbaric city is laid down on a map published at Antwerp in 1570 In 1604 Champlain sailed in search of the Northern Eldorado, twenty-two leagues up the Penobscot from the Isle Haute, He supposed the river to be that of Norembega, but wisely came to the conclusion that those travellers who told of the great city had never seen it. He saw no evidences of anything like civilization, but mentions the finding of a cross, very old and mossy, in the woods.]

THE winding way the serpent takes
The mystic water took,

From where, to count its beaded lakes, The forest sped its brook.

A narrow space 'twixt shore and shore,

For sun or stars to fall,
While evermore, behind, before,
Closed in the forest wall.

The dim wood hiding underneath
Wan flowers without a name ;
Life tangled with decay and death,
League after league the same.

Unbroken over swamp and hill
The rounding shadow lay,
Save where the river cut at will
A pathway to the day.

"Leave me an hour of rest; go thou
And look from yonder heights;
Perchance the valley even now
Is starred with city lights."

The henchman climbed the nearest hill,
He saw nor tower nor town,

But, through the drear woods, lone and still,

The river rolling down.

He heard the stealthy feet of things
Whose shapes he could not see,
A flutter as of evil wings,

The fall of a dead tree.

The pines stood black against the moon, A sword of fire beyond:

He heard the wolf howl, and the loon
Laugh from his reedy pond.

He turned him back: "O master dear,
We are but men misled;
And thou hast sought a city here
To find a grave instead."

"As God shall will! what matters where
A true man's cross may stand,
So Heaven be o'er it here as there
In pleasant Norman land?

"These woods, perchance, no secret hide

Of lordly tower and hall;
Yon river in its wanderings wide

Has washed no city wall;

"Yet mirrored in the sullen stream
The holy stars are given :
Is Norembega, then, a dream
Whose waking is in Heaven?

"No builded wonder of these lands
My weary eyes shall see ;
A city never made with hands
Alone awaiteth me-

"Urbs Syon mystica'; I see Its mansions passing fair, 'Condita calo '; let me be,

Dear Lord, a dweller there !

Above the dying exile hung The vision of the oard,