emerald greenness of the waving fields,
The shady groves and pleasant cottage grounds,
And all the beauties of the happy vale
Soon vanished imperceptibly, as if
Some unconsuming furnace underneath
Had baked the earth and rendered it all bare,
Until its inmates wandered desolate,
With hollow cheeks, sunk eyes, and haggard faces,
Like walking skeletons pasted o'er with skin.
No more would blooming girls with pitchers laden
Repair to the clear lake while curling smoke
Rose from their cottage roofs; no more at morn
Would Rama be the first at school to see
His Seeta deck her father's house with flowers;
No more at eve the village master pour
From Hindu lore the mighty deeds of gods
To the delighted ears of simple men;
For these have left their lands and their dear homes.
And Seeta with her father left her cot,
And cast behind, with a deep, heavy sigh,
One ling'ring look upon that vale where she
Was born and fondly nursed,--where glided on
Her days in pleasure and pure innocence,--
Where Rama lived and loved her tenderly.
Her father died of hunger on the way,
And the lone creature wandered in the streets
Of towns from door to door, and vainly begged
For food, till some, deep moved by the sad tales
Of the lone straggler, safely lodged her in
A famine camp, where, heavy laden with
A double sorrow (for her lover too,
She thought, had died), her tedious life she spent.
And days and weeks and months thus rolled away,
Until at last her love for the dead youth
Mysterious waned, and, like a shallow lamp,
Burnt in her breast with nothing to feed it.

One day the news went through the famine shed
That a lean youth, plucked from the very arms
Of cruel death, was tenderly nursed there;
And all its inmates hurried to the scene.
Poor Seeta saw the youth, and that sad sight
She ne'er forgot; the youth was in her mind
Too firmly rooted to be rooted out,
Who ev'ry day in strength and beauty grew, till he
Appeared the fairest youth in all the camp.
First pity for the youth, then love for him
Mysterious came to her, until at last
The flick'ring flame shone sudden in her breast.
"This stranger I must wed, for him I love,
I know not how; that pleasant face is like
The face of him I dearly loved; I see
Appearing ev'ry day upon that face,
As if by magic wrought, those beauties that
Were seated on dead Rama's face." Thus mused