III.
Man’s heart may change,
but Nature’s glory never,—
Strange features throng around
me, and the shore
Is not my own dear land.
Yet why deplore
This change of doom?
All mortal ties must sever.
The pang is past,—and
now with blest endeavour
I check the ready tear, the
rising sigh
The common earth is here—the
common sky—
The common FATHER. And
how high soever
O’er other tribes proud
England’s hosts may seem,
God’s children, fair
or sable, equal find
A FATHER’S love.
Then learn, O man, to deem
All difference idle save of
heart or mind
Thy duty, love—each
cause of strife, a dream—
Thy home, the world—thy
family, mankind.
D.L.R.
For the sake of my home readers I must now say a word or two on the effect produced upon the mind of a stranger on his approach to Calcutta from the Sandheads.
As we run up the Bay of Bengal and approach the dangerous Sandheads, the beautiful deep blue of the ocean suddenly disappears. It turns into a pale green. The sea, even in calm weather, rolls over soundings in long swells. The hue of the water is varied by different depths, and in passing over the edge of soundings, it is curious to observe how distinctly the form of the sands may be traced by the different shades of green in the water above and beyond them. In the lower part of the bay, the crisp foam of the dark sea at night is instinct with phosphoric lustre. The ship seems to make her way through galaxies of little ocean stars. We lose sight of this poetical phenomenon as we approach the mouth of the Hooghly. But the passengers, towards the termination of their voyage, become less observant of the changeful aspect of the sea. Though amused occasionally by flights of sea-gulls, immense shoals of porpoises, apparently tumbling or rolling head over tail against the wind, and the small sprat-like fishes that sometimes play and glitter on the surface, the stranger grows impatient to catch a glimpse of an Indian jungle; and even the swampy tiger-haunted Saugor Island is greeted with that degree of interest which novelty usually inspires.
At first the land is but little above the level of the water. It rises gradually as we pass up further from the sea. As we come still nearer to Calcutta, the soil on shore seems to improve in richness and the trees to increase in size. The little clusters of nest-like villages snugly sheltered in foliage—the groups of dark figures in white garments—the cattle wandering over the open plain—the emerald-colored fields of rice—the rich groves of mangoe trees—the vast and magnificent banyans, with straight roots dropping from their highest branches, (hundreds of these branch-dropped roots being fixed into the earth and forming “a pillared shade"),—the tall, slim palms of different characters and with crowns of different forms, feathery or fan-like,—the many-stemmed and long,