immediately.  But, notwithstanding, so well did they succeed that among all the wonderful palaces of that age and land there was none to compare with The Magic Isle, for thus was it called, because by ingenious device it floated on the bosom of one of the lakes by which that country was diversified.  No bridge led to this palace, but gilded barges were ever ready to spread their silken sails and convey the king to and from the elysium, which sometimes, as if in coquetry, receded at his approach among flower-decked islands, and sometimes bore down to meet the gay flotilla, branches spread and garlands waving, like some enchanted vessel of unknown fashion and fragrance.

“But strange to tell, the young king grew every day more grave and pensive in the midst of all these delights.  Music nor mirth could win him from the melancholy which overshadowed him.  The truth was, that amid so much adulation as surrounded him, the idol of a nation, his soul no longer increased in wisdom; and loving virtue beyond all other things, he secretly bemoaned his defection whilst not perceiving its cause.  His virtues, the cynosure of all eyes, withered like tender flowers meant to blossom in the shade, but unnaturally exposed to noon-day.  His adoring people bewailed what they thought must be a foreshadowing of mortal illness, and the wise counsellors of his childhood vainly strove to fathom his mood.  But those who know us best are ever the Unseen, and about the young monarch hovered the benignant influences that had watched his infancy, and now rightly interpreted the sorrow of his heart.  In sooth, that this sorrow was matter of rejoicing in the Air, I gather from the joyous mien of that river-sprite which one day surprised him as he languidly mused in a balcony that overhung the water, and spoke to him in accents strange to his ear and yet at once comprehended.

“’Come, O king, my voice obey;
Come where hidden things are seen;
Come with me from garish day,
Withering, blasting, grievous, vain,
To retreat of mystery,
Haunt of holy mystery.’

“These words, as I have related, were spoken in an unknown tongue, and yet my story gives the mystic speech in pleasant and familiar rhythm.  I do not know how this may be,” and Nawab Khan gravely shook his head, “but perchance in recounting his experience, the king, unable to exactly reproduce in his own tongue the message brought to him by the sprite, for the thoughts of the Immortals cannot be expressed in human speech, conveyed a semblance of it in such words as he could command, and sought to veil their incompetency by an agreeable measure.  In like manner I think may the art of poetry have been invented.  It is an effort to cover by wile of dulcet utterance the impotence of mortal speech to tell the things that belong to the spirit.  And, after all, language as we know it is an uncertain interpreter of even human emotions.  So many of our words, and they our dearest, are but symbols representing unknown quantities.