 | Hours at Naples, and Other Poems |  |
INDIAN SONG OF FESTIVAL.
'Tis an Indian hour of Jubilee,Let the glad and the lovely assembled be!
Come forth—all ye children of Beauty now,
With glittering gems upon bosom and brow,
Come with Coronals and with Carkanets,
While the Day God over our dimm'd World sets.
Those Carkanets and those Coronals
Shall deck this fairest of Festivals!
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Illume their soft sheen with their coloured glows;
How the gems clasped over her gentle heart
With a fitful lustre, now heave and start
To a keener radiance—now softly fade,
As though faintly touched by a tender shade.
'Tis that every hue and that every ray,
Responds to her innocent pulse's play!
And in delicate language, mystic and sweet,
The quivering gems their rich story repeat,
And with every sparkle and tremour tell
How those pulses sink, or those pulses swell.
Lamps are gleaming o'er bower and o'er bannered bark,
O'er bamboo-work tower and flower-filled ark,
While the Dusk is now melting fast into the Dark.
Come forth—Oh! ye Children of India's Sun,
Doth the gong not your wakening Senses stun?
Tromp and cymbal announce too the revelry.
Come forth!—come ye forth to the Jubilee,
'Tis the first sweet Hour of a festal Night—
Who would fly from Pleasure, and frown on Delight?
| Hours at Naples, and Other Poems | |