Twice forty winters tip my beard with snow,
And age’s chilling gusts around me blow.
In early youth, by contemplation led,
With high pursuits my flattered thoughts were fed;
To nature first my labours were confined,
And all her charms were opened to my mind;
Each flower that glistened in the morning dew,
And every shrub that in the forest grew:
From earth to heaven I cast my wondering eyes,
Saw suns unnumbered sparkle in the skies;
Marked the just progress of each rolling sphere,
Described the seasons, and reformed the year.
At length sublimer studies I began,
And fixed my levelled telescope on man.
INDIAN TALE.
Absorbed in those visionary secrets, which had now become the great
charm of her existence, Nourmahal happened, during one of her
excursions among the mountains, to stray to some distance from her
attendants. Mounted on a padded pony, that was accustomed to climb
the hills, she left the rein loose upon his neck, permitting the
animal sometimes to browse upon the herbage over which he wandered,
sometimes to drink from the crystal springs which leaped down the
mountain’s side, full of that joy with which the whole scene appeared
to be animated. It was one of those days in the advancing spring, when
the valleys and hills and forests of Cashmere were arrayed in all the
pride of their beauty, honouring the great festival which our planet
holds every year, in thanksgiving to the Omnipotent for ordering his
chamberlain, the zephyr, to spread the emerald carpet, and the clouds
to foster the infant plants in the cradle of the earth.
“Ah!” said Nourmahal to herself, as the fragrance of the thymy turf,
pressed by her pony’s feet, filled her soul with a rush of irresistible
emotion, “how true, how beautiful, are the words of the Gulistan:--‘He
clotheth the bodies of the trees with verdant foliage, the festal
garments of spring, and in celebration of the return of that season
crowneth the youthful branches with garlands of blossoms. By his power
the juice of the cane is converted into delicious honey; and by his
discipline the kernel of the date becometh a lofty tree. Clouds and
winds, the moon, the sun and the sky, are all busied, that thou, O man!
mayst obtain thy bread. _Eat it not in neglect._ For thy sake all these
revolve and are obedient. It is not, therefore, consistent with the
rules of justice that _thou only shouldest not obey_.’
“Wherefore rebels this heart of mine against its destiny? Had I been
a shepherdess, like that maiden, slumbering yonder beneath the shade
of that willow, like her I should have been content to follow my flock
wherever it chose to rove; like her I should lie down when fatigued,
repose in happiness, and awake to the renewal of that serene enjoyment,
which is expressed in her composed and rosy countenance. What evil
spirit is this that seems to have taken possession of all my faculties?
Honoured by the preference of the greatest warrior in Hindostan, placed
at the head of his household, surrounded by all the luxuries which
princely rank and opulence can bestow, why is it that my heart denies
the interchange of other sentiments, flies away from all the real
glowing loveliness spread here at my feet, to ponder upon far distant
scenes,--scenes that I, perhaps, never may revisit?”
The grief that came over her soul while she thus yielded to despair,
found relief in a shower of tears, which ran unheeded down her
lovely cheeks. Her attendants, meanwhile, accustomed to her moods of
abstraction, and not imagining that she was likely to wander beyond her
usual rides, gave themselves up to all the gladness of the day. They
had discovered a small lake, secluded amongst the hills, shaded from
the sun by willows and palms, clear as the sky above their heads, its
bed composed of fine sand, its surface so unruffled, that when they
came in a group upon it, and looked into it, holding each other by the
hand, they beheld themselves, and the trees and the hill-sides around
perfectly pictured as in a mirror. Although they had already performed
their ablutions in the harem, they could not resist the temptation
to bathe again. Having thrown off their garments, and loosened the
fillets by which their long hair was bound, they plunged into the cool
fountain, where they sat down and amused themselves with lifting the
water in the hollows of their hands, and then permitting it to fall on
the tops of their heads in refreshing streams. “The nightingales,” as
Sadi says, “were chanting around them from the pulpits of the trees.”
A zephyr gently waved the branches of the palms and willows by which
they were shaded, the grasshoppers chirped on the hills, bees murmured
among the yellow broom, and butterflies coursed each other from flower
to flower, now expanding their ample wings, now closing them up as if
afraid of exposing their delicate azure too much to the rays of the
noon-day sun.
While the gay maidens were still revelling in the delicious coolness
of the fountain, telling each other their dreams of the preceding
night, Kanun called their attention to a sound which she thought she
had heard. They unanimously proclaimed it to be one of her fancies,
and went on with their talk; when she, again hushing them to silence,
bade them listen in the direction to which she pointed out. They now
perceived at some distance up the hill, almost hidden by plane and
poplar-trees, an ancient temple of considerable extent, and near it a
round tower so covered with ivy, that it looked to them like a tall
cypress. Presently the sound which before was faint, swelled louder
on the air, and filling the atmosphere with an undulation of melody,
passed away as one of the visions of which they had just been speaking.
It was, however, after a short pause repeated; Kanun declared that they
must be in one of those enchanted valleys with which Cashmere abounded.
They listened with increasing wonder, and while they kept their eyes
directed towards the temple, they beheld, emerging from the shade of
the trees by which it was encircled, a line of female pilgrims, in
the Hindoo attire, preceded by a girl clad in white, her head crowned
with white roses, and bearing in her hand a silver wand wreathed with
blossoms of the apple-tree.
The moment the procession began to move the music ceased. Each of the
pilgrims held the fore-finger of the right hand to her lips, bearing
in the left a bunch of various flowers, carefully arranged, and tied
with the slender filaments of the vine. Descending slowly towards the
lake, they seemed to experience no surprise on finding it already
occupied by the bathers, who, hiding their limbs in their hair, watched
with curiosity the progress of the religious ceremony. The pilgrims,
standing round the lake, repeated, in a voice scarcely audible, a
prayer that the flowers which they cast into the water might reach in
safety the places for which they were destined--some of those places
being, if Kanun rightly heard the names, as distant as Tatta on the
Indus, as Benares on the Jumna, and as Patna on the Ganges. It seemed
as if a shower of roses and hyacinths, of pansies and jonquils, and
tulips, had fallen from the heavens upon the lake, many of them heaped
upon the beautiful blushing faces and raven hair of the maidens, to
their boundless delight.
The pilgrims having returned to the temple, in the same silent solemn
order as that in which they had descended to the lake, Kanun, while she
divested herself, with scrupulous diligence, of the fragrant burthen
which was partly entangled in her hair, bade her companions to be
careful to follow her example, as she was convinced, from what had
occurred, that they must be in the celebrated fountain of Send-Brare.
Being immediately called upon on all sides to explain the mysteries
of this fountain, she said, that towards the middle of the spring, as
she had heard, the fountain flowed and ebbed at the dawn, at noon,
and at night, for fifteen successive days, and then remained dry
until the same period in the following year. Pilgrims flocked to the
fountain annually, from all parts of Hindostan, for the purpose of
purifying themselves in the sacred stream, and then of worshipping
in the neighbouring temple. After their prayers and hymns were over
they returned to the spring, and threw into it bouquets of flowers, so
arranged as to express their names, as well as those of the persons
for whom they were intended; these flowers they prayed might be borne
to their native rivers and streams, in order to assure their relatives
and friends, who duly watched for the interesting messengers, of the
tidings of their happy arrival at Send-Brare, and of their having
consummated their devotions. The flowers were sure to disappear with
the retiring waters, and to be conveyed through the interior of the
earth, by the hands of genii, to the places for which they were
designed, however remote those places might be from Cashmere.
While Kanun was explaining this matter to her companions, and answering
the thousand questions to which it gave rise, desiring them to be
astonished at nothing in Cashmere, for that it was all sacred ground
replete with wonders, neither she nor they perceived that the waters
had been gaining rapidly upon them from the moment they entered the
lake. They were already lifted beyond their depth, and one of them, in
attempting to reach the bank, having cried out that she was drowning,
the alarm became general. Those who were near the willow grasped the
branches in their terror, rending the air with their screams and
piteous shouts, which were echoed through the mountains.
Strange yelling sounds were immediately heard on all sides, as of
many persons tortured with intolerable agonies; these noises, which
were at first distant, seemed every moment to come nearer, until they
burst over the heads of the affrighted sufferers, in a shout of horrid
laughter that shook the earth to its centre. The waters were still
rising, all traces of the flowery banks had disappeared, the pilgrims
had come out from the temple and were running about distracted, not
knowing what to do in their confusion. Some fortunately hastened to
rescue the maidens from their perilous condition, many lay prostrate
in fear, others knelt down to appease, by their prayers, the angry
gods. The sky assumed a fiery redness, which was succeeded by the
darkness of night, and a silence more awful even than the dreadful
uproar that had just subsided.
A low murmur proceeded from the ravines of the mountains, followed by
flashes of lightning and hurried peals of thunder, each louder than the
former, scarcely distinguishable from the countless shouts by which
they were re-echoed all round the lurid horizon. Hail, snow, rain,
furiously precipitated from the clouds, were succeeded by a tempest of
wind that bent the tops of the stoutest pines to the earth. The tower
of the temple, struck by a thunder-bolt, was rent in two, and one of
the lofty walls fell with a tremendous crash. The dome gave way before
the storm, when an enormous globe of fire entered with a hissing sound,
and exploding in the sacred building, left it a pile of ruins.
While the battle of the elements was thus raging, Nourmahal, borne
rapidly towards the higher ranges of the mountains by the faithful
animal on which she was seated, whose sagacity and experience taught it
the means of safety on such occasions, escaped from all the dangers of
the scene. Above her, the sky was serene as an infant’s smile; beneath,
she beheld a sea of black clouds, agitated as if they had been scourged
against each other by the lash of some fiend. The lightning was visible
through them in zig-zag lines, and forked, as if wielded by the same
implacable hand, for the destruction of all things that lived on earth.
The clouds rose higher, every moment, with appalling sounds, that urged
her companion to greater speed, until his steps were arrested by a
voice, louder even than the thunder.
Nourmahal, turning round, beheld standing near her on an isolated rock,
the figure of an aged man, his loins girded with a panther’s hide, a
goat-skin flung over his shoulder, a pointed woolly cap on his head,
his white uncombed beard long and bushy, and in his hand a rude thorny
staff, upon which he leant. Looking down on the warring elements below,
he seemed not only to enjoy the spectacle with a savage delight, but
to direct the conflict with the authority of a commander. He called to
the hail, and the rain, and the lightnings, the rolling thunders, and
the winds, by names such as a charioteer uses when he urges his horses
to their utmost prowess on the course, or in the field of battle. His
voice resounded through the sky, as he bade the elements advance, or
retreat, or suspend their fury; and when he issued his mandates and
saw how well they were obeyed, he cheered his slaves with a roar of
laughter awful as the trumpet of the destroying angel.
Pausing for a while, he gazed on Nourmahal, who was trembling through
all her frame, and in accents, somewhat softened from their harsher
sounds, he assured her that she was out of all danger, as she had no
share in the causes that produced it. He then directed her to proceed
onwards by a path which he pointed out, which led her to some distance,
until it terminated at a splendid portal, the arch and pillars of
which seemed to have been carved out of the living rock, and glittered
in all the colours of the rainbow. She was met at the entrance by a
female attendant, graceful as a sylph, who encouraged her by winning
smiles to dismount from her palfrey, and to enter the hall, the sides
and roofs of which were composed of porphyry and jasper. From the hall
she was led through long galleries to a spacious saloon, where she
was conducted to a couch spread with Persian cloth of silver, through
a group of virgins, who paid her the homage due only to a reigning
sovereign.
Nourmahal summoned all the energies of her mind, to preserve her
conviction that she was not the sport of some delusion of her fancy.
Her apprehensions were soon set at rest upon this point, by the
information which she received from her beautiful attendants, who
expressed their astonishment that she had not before heard of the
hermit Baba Zeinedeen, to whom was entrusted the guardianship of the
three wells, whence spring the Jumna, the Indus, and the Ganges. To his
power also, they added, it belonged to control the dreadful tempests
which were always called forth among the mountains of that district
by any noises in the open air, beyond the ordinary sounds of nature.
The peasants, when crossing those mountains, never spoke above their
breath; the pilgrims repairing to Send-Brare, never uttered a syllable
out of the temple, so well were they aware of the fearful consequences.
Not only winds and thunders arose, but fields of ice were separated
from the higher declivities of the mountains, and in their descent to
the valleys involved whole villages in destruction. On those occasions
Zeinedeen was obliged to issue from his tower, and to restrain the
warring elements, otherwise the whole country of Cashmere, the paradise
of the earth, would be converted into a scene of desolation. His anger
was unbounded when thus disturbed from his usual pursuits; but when the
calamities of the hour were over, he resumed, with fresh ardour, his
sublime studies, and was accessible to all who wished to consult him.
Nourmahal’s fortitude sensibly returned, while this cheering and
interesting intelligence was conveyed to her by rosy lips, and
amidst sunny smiles. They, moreover, assured her, that she was well
known to Zeinedeen, who had often spoken of her. Iced lemonade, with
confectionary of the most exquisite flavour, was then served on golden
trays; and, by the time she had rested from her fatigue, Zeinedeen
returned.
Taking Nourmahal by the hand, the hermit soothed the alarms with which
his savage appearance filled her breast, notwithstanding all she
had heard of his benevolence. He informed her that the commotions,
unfortunately excited by her own attendants, from their ignorance of
the nature of the fountain in which they bathed, and of the results
by which their loud cries would be followed, were happily terminated,
and that, with the exception of the ruined tower and temple, no other
mischief had occurred. Her attendants had been saved from their perils
by the pilgrims, and had found shelter in a cavern to which one of his
slaves should conduct her, as soon as she wished to return to them.
Nourmahal’s terrors having been completely dissipated by the friendly
language of the hermit, she prayed permission to revisit him, in order
to receive instructions in the lofty walks of knowledge with which
he was conversant, to explore the fountains of the great rivers,
especially of her own beloved Jumna, and to behold the wonders over
which he held dominion. The hermit readily acceded to her wishes, and
attending her to her palfrey, which was in waiting at the portal, he
led the animal with his own hand, through the more difficult passages
of the mountain; then confiding her to the care of an intelligent
slave, whom he had sent forward for the purpose, he gave her his
benediction, and watched her progress, until distance shut her out from
his view.
Nourmahal’s attendants were no less delighted than herself, with their
having met again, after a separation so unexpected and so awful during
its continuance. Afkun fortunately had spent the day in the capital,
where he was much occupied in organizing his troops for the march to
Lahore, having been summoned hither by urgent despatches from Chusero.
The bustle of military preparations in which all the male inmates
of the castle were involved, left them little time for attending to
the adventures which Kanun and her companions had to relate upon
their arrival. What, with rivetting of armour, whetting of sabres and
spear points, polishing of shields and matchlocks, new stringing of
bows, packing of quivers with arrows, and trying the mettle of horses
destined for the field, it seemed as if nobody had a moment to spare
to listen to Kanun. The cooks and servants of the kitchen were all
taken up in providing the continual banquets which were kept up in the
great hall of the castle, from morning until late in the night, in
consequence of the number of Omrahs, and Rajahs, and cavaliers, who
crowded to the residence of the subah, to tender their services.
Resolving, as he had done from the beginning, to espouse the cause of
the prince, it was highly gratifying to Afkun’s mind, to find that
cause so popular throughout Cashmere. The offers of assistance which
he received from all sides were so numerous, that within a few weeks
he was enabled to muster the whole force of twenty thousand fighting
men, with which he had pledged himself to join Chusero’s army. The last
letters from the prince informed him, that Jehangire, after remaining
for a while at Delhi, had set out with the whole of his troops in the
direction of Lahore, and that not a moment was to be lost in making
preparations for the general battle, upon which the destinies of the
empire depended.
As speedily as the different troops marched into the capital, from
the surrounding districts, they were embodied under the command of
experienced officers, and directed to proceed to Bember, where they
were to wait until the whole contingent should be assembled. A strong
garrison was left in the capital of Cashmere. The castle of the subah
being raised on an eminence, surrounded by a deep dyke filled with
water, which could only be crossed by a drawbridge, and the rocks
which formed its walls and the greater portion of its towers, being
inaccessible to an invading force, was confided to the care of a small
band of veterans, too old to take any part in the expedition.
Afkun deferred to the last moment the painful task of announcing to
Nourmahal his departure for a war, from which it might not be his fate
to return. His steed was already caparisoned in the court-yard; the
officers by whom he was to be attended, were mounted; and his pages
were waiting in the great hall, holding his scymitar and shield, when
he presented himself to his idolized consort, clad in his chain armour,
and plain helmet of steel without plumes. Taking both her hands in
his, he looked into her eyes to find there some tokens of that deep
passionate love, which could afford him one bright remembrance to
dwell upon during his absence. But he could discern in those spheres
of unbounded loveliness no impulses, beyond that interest which she
unfeignedly felt in his success as a warrior. Kissing her cheeks,
while the big tear was gathering from his anguished heart, he hastened
to the hall, and girding on his sword, and passing his left arm through
the clasp of his shield, he went forth, reckless of a life that he felt
to be of such little worth to Nourmahal.