Indias Love Lyrics | Page 6

make, The echoes of their silvery bells were blown across the lake.
The evening air was very sweet; from off the island bowers?Came scents of Moghra trees in bloom, and Oleander flowers.
"The Moghra flowers that smell so sweet?When love's young fancies play;?The acrid Moghra flowers, still sweet?Though love be burnt away."
The boat went drifting, ucontrolled, the rower rowed no more, But deftly turned the slender prow towards the further shore.
The dying sunset touched with gold the Jasmin in his hair;?His eyes were darkly luminous: she looked and found him fair.
And so persuasively he spoke, she could not say him nay,?And when his young hands took her own, she smiled and let them stay.
And all the youth awake in him, all love of Love in her,?All scents of white and subtle flowers that filled the twilight air
Combined together with the night in kind conspiracy?To do Love service, while the boat went drifting onwards, free.
"The Moghra flowers, the Moghra flowers,?While Youth's quick pulses play?They are so sweet, they still are sweet,?Though passion burns away."
Low in the boat the lovers lay, and from his sable curls?The Jasmin flowers slipped away to rest among the girl's.
Oh, silver lake and silver night and tender silver sky!?Where as the hours passed, the moon rose white and cold on high.
"The Moghra flowers, the Moghra flowers,?So dear to Youth at play;?The small and subtle Moghra flowers?That only last a day."
Suddenly, frightened, she awoke, and waking vaguely saw?The boat had stranded in the sedge that fringed the further shore.
The breeze grown chilly, swayed the palms; she heard, still half awake, A prowling jackal's hungry cry blown faintly o'er the lake.
She shivered, but she turned to kiss his soft, remembered face, Lit by the pallid light he lay, in Youth's abandoned grace.
But as her lips met his she paused, in terror and dismay,?The white moon showed her by her side asleep a Leper lay.
"Ah, Moghra flowers, white Moghra flowers,?All love is blind, they say;?The Moghra flowers, so sweet, so sweet,?Though love be burnt away!"
Valgovind's Song in the Spring
The Temple bells are ringing,?The young green corn is springing,
And the marriage month is drawing very near.
I lie hidden in the grass,?And I count the moments pass,
For the month of marriages is drawing near.
Soon, ah, soon, the women spread?The appointed bridal bed
With hibiscus buds and crimson marriage flowers,
Where, when all the songs are done,?And the dear dark night begun,
I shall hold her in my happy arms for hours.
She is young and very sweet,?From the silver on her feet
To the silver and the flowers in her hair,?And her beauty makes me swoon,?As the Moghra trees at noon
Intoxicate the hot and quivering air.
Ah, I would the hours were fleet?As her silver circled feet,
I am weary of the daytime and the night;?I am weary unto death,?Oh my rose with jasmin breath,
With this longing for your beauty and your light.
Youth
I am not sure if I knew the truth?What his case or crime might be,?I only know that he pleaded Youth,?A beautiful, golden plea!
Youth, with its sunlit, passionate eyes,?Its roseate velvet skin--?A plea to cancel a thousand lies,?Or a thousand nights of sin.
The men who judged him were old and grey?Their eyes and their senses dim,?He brought the light of a warm Spring day?To the Court-house bare and grim.
Could he plead guilty in a lovelier way??His judges acquitted him.
When Love is Over?Song of Khan Zada
Only in August my heart was aflame,?Catching the scent of your Wind-stirred hair,?Now, though you spread it to soften my sleep?Through the night, I should hardly care.
Only last August I drank that water?Because it had chanced to cool your hands;?When love is over, how little of love?Even the lover understands!
"Golden Eyes"
Oh Amber Eyes, oh Golden Eyes!?Oh Eyes so softly gay!?Wherein swift fancies fall and rise,?Grow dark and fade away.?Eyes like a little limpid pool?That holds a sunset sky,?While on its surface, calm and cool,?Blue water lilies lie.
Oh Tender Eyes, oh Wistful Eyes,?You smiled on me one day,?And all my life, in glad surprise,?Leapt up and pleaded "Stay!"?Alas, oh cruel, starlike eyes,?So grave and yet so gay,?You went to lighten other skies,?Smiled once and passed away.
Oh, you whom I name "Golden Eyes,"?Perhaps I used to know?Your beauty under other skies?In lives lived long ago.?Perhaps I rowed with galley slaves,?Whose labour never ceased,?To bring across Phoenician waves?Your treasure from the East.
Maybe you were an Emperor then?And I a favourite slave;?Some youth, whom from the lions' den?You vainly tried to save!?Maybe I reigned, a mighty King,?The early nations knew,?And you were some slight captive thing,?Some maiden whom I slew.
Perhaps, adrift on desert shores?Beside some shipwrecked prow,?I gladly gave my life for yours.?Would I might give it now!?Or on some sacrificial stone?Strange Gods we satisfied,?Perhaps you stooped and left a throne?To kiss me ere I died.
Perhaps, still further back than this,?In times ere men were men,?You granted me a