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Title: By The Taj Mahal
Author: Cale Young Rice [
More Titles by Rice]
Under the Indian stars,
Mumtaz Mahal, I am sitting,
Watching them wind their silent way
Over your wistful Tomb;
Watching the crescent prow
Of the moon among them flitting,
Fair as the shallop that bore your soul
To Paradise's Room.
Under the Indian stars,
With palm and peepul about me,
With dome and kiosk and minaret
Mounting against the sky,
I seem to see your face
In all the fairness without me;
In all the sadness that fills my heart
To hear your lover's cry.
Under the Indian stars
I look for your Jasmine Tower,
Along the River whose barren bed
Lies gray beneath the moon.
And thro its magic doors
You seem like a spirit flower,
Wandering back from Allah's bourne
To seek for some lost boon.
Under the Indian stars
I see you softly moving,
Among your jewel-lit maidens there,
A sweet and ghostly queen,
And the scent of attar flung
In your marble font seems proving
That passion never can die from love,
If truly love has been.
Under the Indian stars
He comes, "the Shadow of Allah,"
Jehan, the lord of Magnificence,
The liege who holds your heart.
The silver doors swing back
And alone with him you hallow
The amorous night--whose moon has made
Such visions in me start.
Under the Indian stars--
But the end of all is moaning!
I hear his dying breath that from
Your Tomb shall never die.
For every jasper flower
He set in its dream seems loaning
To Beauty a grief, Mumtaz Mahal,
And unto Fate a sigh.
[The end]
Cale Young Rice's poem: By The Taj Mahal
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