The Zenana - 12 Ending

 A dearer welcome far remains,
 Than that of Delhi’s crowded plains;
 Soon Murad seeks the shadowy hall,
 Cool with the fountain's languid fall;
 His own, his best beloved to meet.
 Why kneels Nadira at his feet?
 With flushing cheek, and eager air,
 One word hath won her easy prayer;
 It is such happiness to grant,
 The slightest fancy that can haunt
 The loved one’s wish, earth hath no gem,
 And heaven no hope, too dear for them.

That night beheld a vessel glide,
Over the Jumna’s onward tide;
One watched that vessel from the shore,
Too conscious of the freight it bore,
And wretched in her granted vow,
Sees Moohreeb leaning by the prow,
And knows that soon the winding river
Will hide him from her view for ever.

Next morn they found that youthful slave
Still kneeling by the sacred wave;
Her head was leaning on the stone
_   Of an old ruined tomb beside,
A fitting pillow cold and lone,
_   The dead had to the dead supplied:
The heart’s last string hath snapt in twain,
Oh, earth, receive thine own again:
The weary one at length has rest
Within thy chill but quiet breast.
Long did the young Nadira keep
_   The memory of that maiden’s lute;
And call to mind her songs, and weep,
_   Long after those charmed chords were mute.
A small white tomb was raised, to show
That human sorrow slept below;
And solemn verse and sacred line
Were graved on that funereal shrine.
And by its side the cypress tree
Stood, like unchanging memory.
And even to this hour are thrown
Green wreaths on that remembered stone;
And songs remain, whose tunes are fraught
With music which herself first taught.
And, it is said, one lonely star
Still brings a murmur sweet and far
Upon the silent midnight air,
As if Zilara wandered there.
Oh! if her poet soul be blent
With its aerial element,
May its lone course be where the rill
Goes singing at its own glad will;
Where early flowers unclose and die;
Where shells beside the ocean lie,
Fill’d with strange tones; or where the breeze
Sheds odours o’er the moonlit seas:
There let her gentle spirit rove,
Embalmed by poetry and love.

• DELHI. — “The remains of this once magnificent and populous city exhibit so desolate and melancholy a scene, that it has more the look of an assemblage of dilapidated mansions of the dead than the living; and it is at this time difficult to imagine it to have ever been any thing else than a vast and splendid cemetery.” — Elliot.