A young Indian who had in vain
offered to his beloved the mystical bouquet, in which the arrangement of
the flowers is made to express love, rowed his canoe to the island, to
learn his fate from its supposed inhabitant; and as he rowed, composed a
song, which expressed that his mistress despised him, as if he were a
Paria, but that he would love her though he were descended from the head
of Brahma;--that her skin was more polished than the marble steps by
which you descend to the tank of a Rajah, and her eyes brighter than any
whose glances were watched by presumptuous strangers through the rents
of the embroidered purdah(10) of a Nawaub;--that she was loftier in his
eyes than the black pagoda of Juggernaut, and more brilliant than the
trident of the temple of Maha-deva, when it sparkled in the beams of the
moon. And as both these objects were visible to his eyes from the shore,
as he rowed on in the soft and glorious serenity of an Indian night, no
wonder they found a place in his verse. Finally, he promised, that if
she was propitious to his suit, he would build her a hut, raised four
feet above the ground to avoid the serpents;--that her dwelling should
be overshadowed by the boughs of the tamarind; and that while she slept,
he would drive the musquitoes from her with a fan, composed of the
leaves of the first flowers which she accepted as a testimony of his
passion. (10) The curtain behind which women are concealed. “It so happened, that the same night, the young female, whose reserve
had been the result of any thing but indifference, attended by two of
her companions, rowed her canoe to the same spot, with the view of
discovering whether the vows of her lover were sincere. They arrived
about the same time; and though it was now twilight, and the
superstition of these timid beings gave a darker tinge to the shadows
that surrounded them, they ventured to land; and, bearing their baskets
of flowers in trembling hands, advanced to hang them on the ruins of the
pagoda, amid which it was presumed the new goddess had fixed her abode. They proceeded, not without difficulty, through thickets of flowers that
had sprung spontaneously in the uncultivated soil--not without fear that
a tiger might spring on them at every step, till they recollected that
those animals chose generally the large jungles for their retreat, and
seldom harboured amid flowers. Still less was the alligator to be
dreaded, amid the narrow streams that they could cross without tinging
their ancles with its pure water. The tamarind, the cocoa, and the
palm-tree, shed their blossoms, and exhaled their odours, and waved
their leaves, over the head of the trembling votarist as she approached
the ruin of the pagoda. It had been a massive square building, erected
amid rocks, that, by a caprice of nature not uncommon in the Indian
isles, occupied its centre, and appeared the consequence of some
volcanic explosion. The earthquake that had overthrown it, had mingled
the rocks and ruins together in a shapeless and deformed mass, which
seemed to bear alike the traces of the impotence of art and nature, when
prostrated by the power that has formed and can annihilate both. There
were pillars, wrought with singular characters, heaped amid stones that
bore no impress but that of some fearful and violent action of nature,
that seemed to say, Mortals, write your lines with the chisel, I write
my hieroglyphics in fire. There were the disjointed piles of stones
carved into the form of snakes, on which the hideous idol of Seeva had
once been seated; and close to them the rose was bursting through the
earth which occupied the fissures of the rock, as if nature preached a
milder theology, and deputed her darling flower as her missionary to her
children. The idol itself had fallen, and lay in fragments. The horrid
mouth was still visible, into which human hearts had been formerly
inserted. But now, the beautiful peacocks, with their rain-bow trains
and arched necks, were feeding their young amid the branches of the
tamarind that overhung the blackened fragments. The young Indians
advanced with diminished fear, for there was neither sight or sound to
inspire the fear that attends the approach to the presence of a
spiritual being--all was calm, still, and dark. Yet their feet trod with
involuntary lightness as they advanced to these ruins, which combined
the devastations of nature with those of the human passions, perhaps
more bloody and wild than the former. Near the ruins there had formerly
been a tank, as is usual, near the pagodas, both for the purposes of
refreshment and purification; but the steps were now broken, and the
water was stagnated. The young Indians, however, took up a few drops,
invoked the “goddess of the isle,” and approached the only remaining
arch. The exterior front of this building had been constructed of stone,
but its interior had been hollowed out of the rock; and its recesses
resembled, in some degree, those in the island of Elephanta. There were
monstrous figures carved in stone, some adhering to the rock, others
detached from it, all frowning in their shapeless and gigantic
hideousness, and giving to the eye of superstition the terrible
representation of “_gods of stone_.”

“Two of the young votarists, who were distinguished for their courage,
advanced and performed a kind of wild dance before the ruins of the
ancient gods, as they called them, and invoked (as they might) the new
resident of the isle to be propitious to the vows of their companion,
who advanced to hang her wreath of flowers round the broken remains of
an idol half-defaced and half-hidden among the fragments of stone, but
clustered over with that rich vegetation which seems, in oriental
countries, to announce the eternal triumph of nature amid the ruins of
art. Every year renews the rose, but what year shall see a pyramid
rebuilt? As the young Indian hung her wreath on the shapeless stone, a
voice murmured, “There is a _withered_ flower there.”--“Yes--yes--there
is,” answered the votarist, “and that withered flower is an emblem of my
heart. I have cherished many roses, but suffered one to wither that was
the sweetest to me of all the wreath. Wilt thou revive him for me,
unknown goddess, and my wreath shall no longer be a dishonour to thy
shrine?”--“Wilt _thou_ revive the rose by placing it in the warmth of
thy bosom,” said the young lover, appearing from behind the fragments of
rock and ruin that had sheltered him, and from which he had uttered his
oracular reply, and listened with delight to the emblematical but
intelligible language of his beloved. “Wilt thou revive the rose?” he
asked, in the triumph of love, as he clasped her to his bosom.