Was like a light from Hell;

And it grew deeper, kindling with the view.
She could not turn her sight

From that infernal gaze, which like a spell Bound her, and held her rooted to the ground. It palsied every power;

Her limbs availed her not in that dread hour;
There was no moving thence;
Thought, memory, sense, were gone:
She heard not now the Tiger's nearer cry;
She thought not on her father now;
Her cold heart's blood ran back;

Her hand lay senseless on the bough it clasped;
Her feet were motionless;

Her fascinated eyes

Like the stone eyeballs of a statue fixed, Yet conscious of the sight that blasted them.

13.

The wind is abroad;
It opens the clouds:
Scattered before the gale,

They skurry through the sky;

And the darkness, retiring, rolls over the vale. The Stars in their beauty come forth on high; And through the dark-blue night

The Moon rides on triumphant, broad, and bright. Distinct and darkening in her light

Appears that Spectre foul:

The moonbeam gives his face and form to sight,

The shape of man,

The living form and face of Arvalan!
His hands are spread to clasp her.

14.

But at that sight of dread the Maid awoke: As if a lightning-stroke

Had burst the spell of fear,

Away she broke all franticly, and fled. There stood a temple near, beside the way, An open fane of Pollear, gentle God, To whom the travellers for protection pray. With elephantine head and eye severe, Here stood his image, such as when he seized And tore the rebel Giant from the ground,

With mighty trunk wreathed round

His impotent bulk, and on his tusks, on high Impaled upheld him between earth and sky.

15.

Thither the affrighted Maiden sped her flight, And she hath reached the place of sanctuary; And now within the temple in despite, Yea, even before the altar, in his sight, Hath Arvalan, with fleshly arm of might, Seized her. That instant the insulted God Caught him aloft, and from his sinuous grasp, As if from some tort catapult let loose, Over the forest hurled him all abroad.

16.

O'ercome with dread,

She tarried not to see what heavenly Power Had saved her in that hour;

Breathless and faint she fled.

And now her foot struck on the knotted root Of a broad manchineel; and there the Maid Fell senselessly beneath the deadly shade.

VI.

CASYAPA.

1.

SHALL this, then, be thy fate, O lovely Maid? Thus, Kailyal, must thy sorrows then be ended? Her face upon the ground,

Her arms at length extended,

There, like a corpse, behold her laid
Beneath the deadly shade!

What if the hungry Tiger, prowling by,
Should snuff his banquet nigh?
Alas! Death needs not now his ministry:
The baleful boughs hang o'er her,
The poison dews descend.
What Power will now restore her?
What God will be her friend?

2.

Bright and so beautiful was that fair night,

It might have calmed the gay amid their mirth,
And given the wretched a delight in tears.
One of the Glendoveers,

The loveliest race of all of heavenly birth,
Hovering with gentle motion o'er the earth,
Amid the moonlight air,

In sportive flight was floating round and round,
Unknowing where his joyous way was tending.
He saw the Maid where motionless she lay,
And stooped his flight descending,
And raised her from the ground.

Her heavy eyelids are half closed;

Her cheeks are pale and livid like the dead; Down hang her loose arms lifelessly; Down hangs her languid head.

3.

With timely pity touched for one so fair,
The gentle Glendoveer

Pressed her, thus pale and senseless, to his

breast,

And springs aloft in air with sinewy wings,
And bears the Maiden there,

Where Himakoot, the holy Mount, on high
From mid-earth rising in mid-heaven,
Shines in its glory like the throne of Even.
Soaring with strenuous flight above,
He bears her to the blessed Grove,
Where in his ancient and august abodes,
There dwells old Casyapa, the Sire of Gods.

4.

The Father of the Immortals sate, Where, underneath the Tree of Life, The Fountains of the Sacred River sprung; The Father of the Immortals smiled Benignant on his son.

"Know'st thou," he said, "my child, Ereenia, know'st thou whom thou bringest here, A mortal to the holy atmosphere?"

EREENIA.

I found her in the Groves of Earth,
Beneath a poison-tree,

Thus lifeless as thou seest her.

In pity have I brought her to these bowers,
Not erring, Father! by that smile, —
By that benignant eye!

CASYAPA.

What if the Maid be sinful? if her ways Were ways of darkness, and her death predoomed To that black hour of midnight, when the Moon Hath turned her face away,

Unwilling to behold

The unhappy end of guilt?

EREENIA.

Then what a lie, my Sire, were written here
In these fair characters! and she had died,
Sure proof of purer life and happier doom,