If those looks that light the skies
Wound like some that burn below.
Who that feels what Love is here,
All its falsehood--all its pain--
Would, for even Elysium's sphere,
Risk the fatal dream again?
Who that midst a desert's heat
Sees the waters fade away
Would not rather die than meet
Streams again as false as they?
The tone of melancholy defiance in which these words were uttered went to
LALLA ROOKH'S heart;--and as she reluctantly rode on she could not help
feeling it to be a sad but still sweet certainty that FERAMORZ was to the
full as enamored and miserable as herself.
The place where they encamped that evening was the first delightful spot
they had come to since they left Lahore. On one side of them was a grove
full of small Hindoo temples and planted with the most graceful trees of
the East, where the tamarind, the cassia, and the silken plantains of
Ceylon were mingled in rich contrast with the high fan-like foliage of the
Palmyra,--that favorite tree of the luxurious bird that lights up the
chambers of its nest with fire-flies.[188]. In the middle of the lawn
where the pavilion stood there was a tank surrounded by small mango-trees
on the clear cold waters of which floated multitudes of the beautiful red
lotus,[189] while at a distance stood the ruins of a strange and awful-
looking tower which seemed old enough to have been the temple of some
religion no longer known and which spoke the voice of desolation in the
midst of all that bloom and loveliness.
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