-Saxon tongue, from the musical, melting Hindostanee:--

Sleep on, sleep on, my baba dear!
Thy faithful slave is watching near.
The cradle wherein my babe I fondle,
Is made of the rare and bright-red sandal;[3]
And the string with which I am rocking my lord,
Is a gay and glittering silken cord.

Sleep on, sleep on, my baba dear!
Thy faithful slave is watching near.
Thy father, my dear, is the jemadar
Of a province which stretches wide and far;
And his brother, my child, is a moonsif great,
Who ruleth o'er many a ryot's fate.

Sleep on, sleep on, my baba dear!
Thy faithful slave is watching near.
Thy mother of hearts is the powerful queen,
The loveliest lady that ever was seen;
And there ne'er was slave more faithful, I trow,
Than she who is rocking thy cradle now.

I have said that our ayah sometimes comes home with her charges--comes
to our home from her own. It is a bad exchange. She awakes slowly from
her dream, as she sees the rosy cheeks, full pouting lips, and round
wondering eyes, that are turned upon the dark stranger and her pale,
thin, little ones. The comparison is painful; these cherub children
have no sympathy with the lonely Hindoo; and the servants of the
house, although awed at first by her foreign aspect, and calm, stately
air, have no permanent respect for one who ranks neither with their
superiors nor with themselves. The climate, too, is as chilling as the
manners around her; her heretofore babas are lords to nobody but
herself; and so, with one thing and another, she grows home-sick, her
heart yearns for her own sunny land, and she is glad--sorrowfully
glad--when at last the announcement is made, that an ayah wants to go
back to India with a family.

And in India once more, what then? Why then, the great ocean is
between her and her fledged nurslings, and she looks round for some
new objects of love and devotion. These she probably finds in another
home, another mistress, another baba; her heart begins its course
anew; and the ayah lives a second life in the young lives of her
children. No joyless existence is hers, no cares without ample
compensations; but yet when I see in my own country one of these
solitary, strangely-attired, dark-skinned women, I feel attracted
towards her by an almost tearful sympathy, and have ever a kind look
and a warm, gentle word for the poor ayah.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] The red sandal-wood