down a well and died.

And yet, how short, when all is said,
This little life of love and tears!
Her age, they say, beside her bed,
To-day is only fifteen years.

The Garden by the Bridge

The Desert sands are heated, parched and dreary,
The tigers rend alive their quivering prey
In the near Jungle; here the kites rise, weary,
Too gorged with living food to fly away.

All night the hungry jackals howl together
Over the carrion in the river bed,
Or seize some small soft thing of fur or feather
Whose dying shrieks on the night air are shed.

I hear from yonder Temple in the distance
Whose roof with obscene carven Gods is piled,
Reiterated with a sad insistence
Sobs of, perhaps, some immolated child.

Strange rites here, where the archway's shade is deeper,
Are consummated in the river bed;
Parias steal the rotten railway sleeper
To burn the bodies of their cholera dead.

But yet, their lust, their hunger, cannot shame them
Goaded by fierce desire, that flays and stings;
Poor beasts, and poorer men. Nay, who shall blame them?
Blame the Inherent Cruelty of Things.

The world is horrible and I am lonely,
Let me rest here where yellow roses bloom
And find forgetfulness, remembering only
Your face beside me in the scented gloom.

Nay, do not shrink! I am not here for passion,
I crave no love, only a little rest,
Although I would my face lay, lover's fashion,
Against the tender coolness of your breast.

I am so weary of the Curse of Living
The endless, aimless torture, tumult, fears.
Surely, if life were any God's free giving,
He, seeing His gift, long since went blind with tears.

Seeing us; our fruitless strife, our futile praying,
Our luckless Present and our bloodstained Past.
Poor players, who make a trick or two in playing,
But know that death _must_ win the game at last.

As round the Fowler, red with feathered slaughter,
The little joyous lark, unconscious, sings,--
As the pink Lotus floats on azure water,
Innocent of the mud from whence it springs.

You walk through life, unheeding all the sorrow,
The fear and pain set close around your way,
Meeting with hopeful eyes each gay to-morrow,
Living with joy each hour of glad to-day.

I love to have you thus (nay, dear, lie quiet,
How should