And her accusers fled his face before, He bade the poor one go and sin no

more.

And Akbar said, after a moment's thought,

"Wise is the lesson by thy prophet taught;

Woe unto him who judges and forgets What hidden evil his own heart besets! Something of this large charity I find In all the sects that sever human kind; I would to Allah that their lives agreed More nearly with the lesson of their creed!

Those yellow Lamas who at Meerut pray

By wind and water power, and love to say:

'He who forgiveth not shall, unforgiven,

Fail of the rest of Buddha,' and who

423

Love-guided, to her home in a far land, Now waited death at the great Shah's command.

Shapely as that dark princess for whose smile

A world was bartered, daughter of the Nile

Herself, and veiling in her large, soft eyes

The passion and the languor of her skies, The Abyssinian knelt low at the feet Of her stern lord: "O king, if it be meet,

And for thy honor's sake," she said,' "that I,

Who am the humblest of thy slaves, should die,

I will not tax thy mercy to forgive.
Easier it is to die than to outlive
All that life gave me, him whose
wrong of thee

Was but the outcome of his love for me, Cherished from childhood, when, beneath the shade

Of templed Axum, side by side we played.

Stolen from his arms, my lover iollowed

425

A young moon, at its narrowest, Curved sharp against the darkening west;

And, momently, the beacon's star,
Slow wheeling o'er its rock afar,
From out the level darkness shot
One instant and again was not.
And then my friend spake quietly
The thought of both: "Yon crescent
see !

Like Islam's symbol-moon it gives
Hints of the light whereby it lives:
Somewhat of goodness, something true
From sun and spirit shining through
All faiths, all worlds, as through the
dark

Of ocean shines the lighthouse spark,
Attests the presence everywhere
Of love and providential care.

The faith the old Norse heart confessed

In one dear name, the hopefulest
And tenderest heard from mortal lips
In pangs of birth or death, from ships
Ice-bitten in the winter sea,
Or lisped beside a mother's knee,
The wiser world hath not outgrown,
And the All-Father is our own!

NOREMBEGA.

[Norembega, or Norimbegue, is the name giv. by early French fishermen and explorers to a fabulous country south of Cape Breton, first discovered by Verrazzani in 1524. It was supposed to have a magnificent city of the same name on a great river, probably the Penobscot. The site of this barbaric city is laid down on a map published at Antwerp in 1570 In 1604 Champlain sailed in search of the Northern Eldorado, twenty-two leagues up the Penobscot from the Isle Haute. He supposed the river to be that of Norembega, but wisely came to the conclusion that those travellers who told of the great city had never seen it. He saw no evidences of anything like civilization, but mentions the finding of a cross, very old and mossy, in the woods. ]

THE winding way the serpent takes
The mystic water took,

From where, to count its beaded lakes, The forest sped its brook.

A narrow space 'twixt shore and shore,

For sun or stars to fall,
While evermore, behind, before,
Closed in the forest wall.

The dim wood hiding underneath Wan flowers without a name ; Life tangled with decay and death, League after league the same.

Unbroken over swamp and hill

The rounding shadow lay, Save where the river cut at will A pathway to the day.

Beside that track of air and light,
Weak as a child unweaned,
At shut of day a Christian knight
Upon his henchman leaned.

The embers of the sunset's fires Along the clouds burned down; "I see," he said, "the domes and spires

Of Norembega town."

"Alack! the domes, O master mine,
Are golden clouds on high;
Yon spire is but the branchless pine
That cuts the evening sky."

"O hush and hark! What sounds are these

But chants and holy hymns?" "Thou hear'st the breeze that stirs the trees

Through all their leafy limbs."

"Is it a chapel bell that fills

The air with its low tone?" "Thou hear'st the tinkle of the rills, The insect's vesper drone."

"The Christ be praised! He sets for

me

A blessed cross in sight!" "Now, nay, 't is but yon blasted tree With two gaunt arms outright!"

"Be it wind so sad or tree so stark, It mattereth not, my knave; Methinks to funeral hymns I hark, The cross is for my grave!

"My life is sped; I shall not see
My home-set sails again;
The sweetest eyes of Normandie
Shall watch for me in vain.

"Yet onward still to ear and eye The baffling marvel calls;

I fain would look before I die
On Norembega's walls.

So, haply, it shall be thy part
At Christian feet to lay
The mystery of the desert's heart
My dead hand plucked away.

"Leave me an hour of rest; go thou
And look from yonder heights;
Perchance the valley even now
Is starred with city lights."

The henchman climbed the nearest hill,
He saw nor tower nor town,

But, through the drear woods, lone and still,

The river rolling down.

He heard the stealthy feet of things
Whose shapes he could not see,
A flutter as of evil wings,

The fall of a dead tree.

The pines stood black against the moon, A sword of fire beyond;

He heard the wolf howl, and the loon
Laugh from his reedy pond.

He turned him back: "O master dear,
We are but men misled;
And thou hast sought a city here
To find a grave instead."

"As God shall will! what matters where
A true man's cross may stand,
So Heaven be o'er it here as there
In pleasant Norman land?

"These woods, perchance, no secict hide

Of lordly tower and hall;
Yon river in its wanderings wide
Has washed no city wall;