The Zenana - 7

Deep silence chained the listeners round,
When, lo, another plaintive sound,
Came from the river’s side, and there
They saw a girl with loosened hair
Seat her beneath a peepul tree,
Where swung her gurrah * mournfully,
Filled with the cool and limpid wave,
An offering o’er some dear one’s grave.
At once Zilara caught the tone,
And made it, as she sung, her own.

SONG.

“Oh weep not o’er the quiet grave,
    Although the spirit lost be near;
Weep not, for well those phantoms know
    How vain the grief above their bier.
Weep not—ah no, ’tis best to die
    Ere all of bloom from life is fled;
Why live, when feelings, friends, and faith
    Have long been numbered with the dead?

“They know no rainbow-hope that weeps
    Itself away to deepest shade;
Nor love, whose very happiness
    Should make the trusting heart afraid.
Ah, human tears are tears of fire,
    That scorch and wither as they flow;
Then let them fall for those who live,
    And not for those who sleep below.

“Yes, weep for those, whose silver chain
    Has long been loosed, and yet live on;
The doomed to drink from life’s dark spring,
    Whose golden bowl has long been gone.
Aye, weep for those, the weary, worn,
    The bound to earth by some vain tie;
Some lingering love, some fond regret,
    Who loathe to live, yet fear to die.”

A moment’s rest, and then once more
Zilara tried her memory’s store,
And woke, while o’er the strings she bowed,
A tale of Rajahstan the proud.

* GURRAH. -- The Gurrah is the water-jar which the Hindoo women poise so gracefully on their heads. Heber mentions, that they hang gurrahs on the peepul, a species of sacred tree; and much planted about graves, that the spirits of the deceased may drink the holy waves of the Ganges.