| |
In Burmah
SLEEP, love, sleep! | |
| The dusty day is done. | |
| Lo! from afar the freshening breezes sweep | |
| Wide over groves of balm, | |
| Down from the towering palm, | 5 |
| In at the open casement cooling run, | |
| And round thy lowly bed, | |
| Thy bed of pain, | |
| Bathing thy patient head, | |
| Like grateful showers of rain, | 10 |
| They come; | |
| While the white curtains, waving to and fro, | |
| Fan the sick air; | |
| And pityingly the shadows come and go, | |
| With gentle human care, | 15 |
| Compassionate and dumb. | |
| |
| The dusty day is done, | |
| The night begun; | |
| While prayerful watch I keep, | |
| Sleep, love, sleep! | 20 |
| Is there no magic in the touch | |
| Of fingers thou dost love so much? | |
| Fain would they scatter poppies o’er thee now; | |
| Or, with its mute caress, | |
| The tremulous lip some soft nepenthe press | 25 |
| Upon thy weary lid and aching brow; | |
| While prayerful watch I keep, | |
| Sleep, love, sleep! | |
| |
| On the pagoda spire | |
| The bells are swinging, | 30 |
| Their little golden circlet in a flutter | |
| With tales the wooing winds have dared to utter, | |
| Till all are ringing, | |
| As if a choir | |
| Of golden-nested birds in heaven were singing, | 35 |
| And with a lulling sound | |
| The music floats around, | |
| And drops like balm into the drowsy ear; | |
| Commingling with the hum | |
| Of the Sepoy’s distant drum, | 40 |
| And lazy beetle ever droning near. | |
| Sounds these of deepest silence born, | |
| Like night made visible by morn; | |
| So silent that I sometimes start | |
| To hear the throbbings of my heart, | 45 |
| And watch, with shivering sense of pain, | |
| To see thy pale lids lift again. | |
| |
| The lizard, with his mouse-like eyes, | |
| Peeps from the mortise in surprise | |
| At such strange quiet after day’s harsh din; | 50 |
| Then boldly ventures out, | |
| And looks about, | |
| And with his hollow feet | |
| Treads his small evening beat, | |
| Darting upon his prey | 55 |
| In such a tricky, winsome sort of way, | |
| His delicate marauding seems no sin. | |
| And still the curtains swing, | |
| But noiselessly; | |
| The bells a melancholy murmur ring, | 60 |
| As tears were in the sky: | |
| More heavily the shadows fall, | |
| Like the black foldings of a pall, | |
| Where juts the rough beam from the wall; | |
| The candles flare | 65 |
| With fresher gusts of air; | |
| The beetle’s drone | |
| Turns to a dirge-like, solitary moan; | |
| Night deepens, and I sit, in cheerless doubt alone. | |
| |
