Ruins about the Taj Mahal

An arid plain leads to the luxuriant gardens which still adorn the mausoleum where Shah Jahan and the lovely partner of his throne "sleep the sleep that knows no waking." Ponds of gold and silver fish are the common ornaments of a great man’s grounds in India. They are covered after sunset with a gauze frame, to protect them from their various nightly enemies. Notwithstanding the care taken for their preservation, they often become the prey of the kingfisher. Tombs in India are palaces, vast and immutable as the slumbers which they cover. As if to add the contrast of natural fertility to human decay, the garden always surrounds the grave.

Mournfully they pass away,
The dearest and the fairest;
Beauty, thou art common clay,
Common doom thou sharest.
Though the rose bestow its dyes
For a blush too tender;
Though the stars endow thine eyes
With their midnight splendour.

Though thy smiles around thee fling
Atmosphere elysian;
Though thy presence seems to spring
Like a poet’s vision;
Though the full heart worship thee,
Like a thing enchanted;
Though the cold earth common be,
When thy touch is wanted:

Yet thou dost decay and die,
And beside thee perish
All that grew beneath thine eye,
All that we wont cherish,
Every gentle hope and thought
Which thou bearest hither;
Hues from thine own heaven brought,
Hues thou takest thither.

Fare thee well—thou soon art flown
From a world that loved thee;
Heaven, that claims thee for its own,
Soon from us removed thee.
Here thy shadows only come,
Fleeting, though divinest;
But in thine eternal home
Steadfastly thou shinest.