_What skill may be in singing,
What worship sound in song,
What lore be taught in loving,
What right divined from wrong:
Such things hath Jayadeva--
In this his Hymn of Love,
Which lauds Govinda ever,--
Displayed; may all approve!_

THE END OF THE INDIAN SONG OF SONGS

_MISCELLANEOUS ORIENTAL POEMS._

_THE RAJPOOT WIFE._

Sing something, Jymul Rao! for the goats are gathered now,
And no more water is to bring;
The village-gates are set, and the night is gray as yet,
God hath given wondrous fancies to thee:--sing!

Then Jymul's supple fingers, with a touch that doubts and lingers,
Sets athrill the saddest wire of all the six;
And the girls sit in a tangle, and hush the tinkling bangle,
While the boys pile the flame with store of sticks.

And vain of village praise, but full of ancient days,
He begins with a smile and with a sigh--
"Who knows the babul-tree by the bend of the Ravee?"
Quoth Gunesh, "I!" and twenty voices, "I!"

"Well--listen! there below, in the shade of bloom and bough,
Is a musjid of carved and coloured stone;
And Abdool Shureef Khan--I spit, to name that man!--
Lieth there, underneath, all alone.

"He was Sultan Mahmoud's vassal, and wore an Amir's tassel
In his green hadj-turban, at Nungul.
Yet the head which went so proud, it is not in his shroud;
There are bones in that grave,--but not a skull!

"And, deep drove in his breast, there moulders with the rest
A dagger, brighter once than Chundra's ray;
A Rajpoot lohar whet it, and a Rajpoot woman set it
Past the power of any hand to tear away.

"'Twas the Ranee Neila true, the wife of Soorj Dehu,
Lord of the Rajpoots of Nourpoor;
You shall hear the mournful story, with its sorrow and its glory,
And curse Shureef Khan,--the soor!"

* * * * *

All in the wide Five-Waters was none like Soorj Dehu,
To foeman who so dreadful, to friend what heart so true?

Like Indus, through the mountains came down the Muslim ranks,
And town-walls fell before them as flooded river-banks;

But Soorj Dehu the Rajpoot owned neither town nor wall;
His house the camp, his roof-tree the sky that covers all;

His seat of state the saddle; his robe a shirt of mail;
His court a thousand