My worship from her scorn and pride.
World-wide apart, and yet so near,
I breathe her charmed atmosphere,
Wherein to her my service brings
The reverence due to holy things.
Her maiden pride, her haughty name,
My dumb devotion shall not shame;
The love that no return doth crave
To knightly levels lifts the slave,
No lance have I, in joust or fight,
To splinter in my lady's sight
But, at her feet, how blest were I
For any need of hers to die!
1877.
THE DEAD FEAST OF THE KOL-FOLK.
E. B. Tylor in his Primitive Culture, chapter xii., gives an account of
the reverence paid the dead by the Kol tribes of Chota Nagpur, Assam.
"When a Ho or Munda," he says, "has been burned on the funeral pile,
collected morsels of his bones are carried in procession with a solemn,
ghostly, sliding step, keeping time to the deep-sounding drum, and when
the old woman who carries the bones on her bamboo tray lowers it from
time to time, then girls who carry pitchers and brass vessels mournfully
reverse them to show that they are empty; thus the remains are taken to
visit every house in the village, and every dwelling of a friend or
relative for miles, and the inmates come out to mourn and praise the
goodness of the departed; the bones are carried to all the dead man's
favorite haunts, to the fields he cultivated, to the grove he planted,
to the threshing-floor where he worked, to the village dance-room where
he made merry. At last they are taken to the grave, and buried in an
earthen vase upon a store of food, covered with one of those huge stone
slabs which European visitors wonder at in the districts of the
aborigines of India." In the Journal of the Asiatic Society, Bengal,
vol. ix., p. 795, is a Ho dirge.
WE have opened the door,
Once, twice, thrice!
We have swept the floor,
We have boiled the rice.
Come hither, come hither!
Come from the far lands,
Come from the star lands,
Come as before!
We lived long together,
We loved one another;
Come back to our life.
Come father, come mother,
Come sister and brother,
Child, husband, and wife,
For you we are sighing.
Come take your old places,
Come look in our faces,
The dead on the dying,
Come home!
We have opened the door,
Once, twice, thrice!
We have kindled the coals,
And we boil th
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