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He did list to the voice of a siren,
 * He was caught by the clinking of gold,

And the slow toil of Europe seemed tiring, And the grey of his fatherland cold; He must haste to the gardens of Circe;
 * What ails him, the slave, that he frets

In thy service? O Lady sans merci!
 * O Land of Regrets!

From the East came the breath of its odours
 * And its heat melted soft in the haze,

While he dimly descried thy pagodas,
 * O Cybele, ancient of days;

Heard the hum of thy mystic processions,
 * The echo of myriads who cry.

And the wail of their vain intercessions,
 * Through the bare empty vault of the sky.

Did he read of the lore of thy sages?
 * Of thy worships by mountain and flood?

Did he muse o'er thy annals? the pages
 * All blotted with treason and blood;

Thy chiefs and thy dynasties reckon?
 * Thy armies—he saw them come forth

O'er the wide stony wolds of the Dekhan,
 * O'er the cities and plains of the North.

He was touched with the tales of our glory,
 * He was stirred by the clash and the jar

Of the nations who kill con amore,
 * The fury of races at war;

'Mid the crumbling of royalties rotting,
 * Each cursed by a knave or a fool,

Where kings and fanatics are plotting, He dreamt of a power and a rule; Hath he come now, in season, to know thee;
 * Hath he seen, what a stranger forgets,

All the graveyards of exiles below thee,
 * O Land of Regrets!