A living stream, as purest crystal clear,
With gentle murmurs wound along the plain,
Its surface bright with fairer lotus-flowers
Than mortal eye on earth had ever seen,
While on its banks were cool, umbrageous groves
Whose drooping branches spicy breezes stir,
A singing bird in every waving bough,
Whose joyful notes the soul of music shed.
A mighty multitude, beyond the power
Of men to number, moved about the plain;
Some, seeming strangers, wander through the groves
And pluck the flowers or eat the luscious fruits;
Some, seeming visitors from better worlds,
Here wait and watch as for expected guests;
While angel devas, clothed in innocence,
Whose faces beam with wisdom, glow with love,
With loving welcomes greet each coming guest,
With loving counsels aid, instruct and guide.
And as he looked, the countless, restless throng
Seemed ever changing, ever moving on,
So that this plain, comparing great to small,
Seemed like a station near some royal town,
Greater than London or old Babylon,
Where all the roads from some vast empire meet,
And many caravans or sweeping trains
Bring and remove the ever-changing throng.
This plain a valley bordered, deep and still,
The very valley of his fearful dream
Seen from the other side, whose rising mists
Were all aglow with ever-changing light,
Like passing clouds above the setting sun,
Through which as through a glass he darkly saw
Unnumbered funeral-trains, in sable clad,
To solemn music and with measured tread
Bearing their dead to countless funeral-piles,
As thick as heaps that through the livelong day
With patient toil the sturdy woodmen rear,
While clearing forests for the golden grain,
And set aflame when evening's shades descend,
Filling the glowing woods with floods of light
And ghostly shadows: So these funeral-piles
Send up their curling smoke and crackling flames.
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