Under the Indian stars...

Under the Indian stars,

Mumtaz Mahal, I am sitting,

Watching them wind their silent way

Over your wistful Tomb;

Watching the crescent prow

Of the moon among them flitting,

Fair as the shallop that bore your soul

To Paradise's Room.

Under the Indian stars,

With palm and peepul about me,

With dome and kiosk and minaret

Mounting against the sky,

I seem to see your face

In all the fairness without me;

In all the sadness that fills my heart

To hear your lover's cry.

Under the Indian stars

I look for your Jasmine Tower,

Along the River whose barren bed

Lies gray beneath the moon.

And thro its magic doors

You seem like a spirit flower,

Wandering back from Allah's bourne

To seek for some lost boon.

Under the Indian stars

I see you softly moving,

Among your jewel-lit maidens there,

A sweet and ghostly queen,

And the scent of attar flung

In your marble font seems proving

That passion never can die from love,

If truly love has been.

Under the Indian stars

He comes, “the Shadow of Allah,”

Jehan, the lord of Magnificence,

The liege who holds your heart.

The silver doors swing back

And alone with him you hallow

The amorous night — whose moon has made

Such visions in me start.

Under the Indian stars —

But the end of all is moaning!

I hear his dying breath that from

Your Tomb shall never die.

For every jasper flower

He set in its dream seems loaning

To Beauty a grief, Mumtaz Mahal,

And unto Fate a sigh.