akened on the River,
To sounds of running water,
With silver Stars for witness
And reflected Stars for light;
Awakened to existence,
With ripples for first music
And sunlight on the River
For earliest sense of sight.

Love grew upon the River
Among the scented flowers,
The open rosy flowers
Of the Lotus buds in bloom--
Love, brilliant as the Morning,
More fervent than the Noon-day,
And tender as the Twilight
In its blue transparent gloom.

Love died upon the River!
Cold snow upon the mountains,
The Lotus leaves turned yellow
And the water very grey.
Our kisses faint and falter,
The clinging hands unfasten,
The golden time is over
And our passion dies away.

Away. To be forgotten,
A ripple on the River,
That flashes in the sunset,
That flashed,--and died away.

Second Song: The Girl from Baltistan

Throb, throb, throb,
Far away in the blue transparent Night,
On the outer horizon of a dreaming consciousness,
She hears the sound of her lover's nearing boat
Afar, afloat
On the river's loneliness, where the Stars are the only light;
Hear the sound of the straining wood
Like a broken sob
Of a heart's distress,
Loving misunderstood.

She lies, with her loose hair spent in soft disorder,
On a silken sheet with a purple woven border,
Every cell of her brain is latent fire,
Every fibre tense with restrained desire.
And the straining oars sound clearer, clearer,
The boat is approaching nearer, nearer;
"How to wait through the moments' space
Till I see the light of my lover's face?"

Throb, throb, throb,
The sound dies down the stream
Till it only clings at the senses' edge
Like a half-remembered dream.
Doubtless, he in the silence lies,
His fair face turned to the tender skies,
Starlight touching his sleeping eyes.
While his boat caught in the thickset sedge
And the waters round it gurgle and sob,
Or floats set free on the river's tide,
Oars laid aside.

She is awake and knows no rest,
Passion dies and is dispossessed
Of his brief, despotic power.
But the Brain, once kindled, would sti