And the spacious abode of Lehna Singh had loveliness enough to veil the sordid character of the life that was lived within its walls.  Atma had not been ignorant of his kinsman’s wealth and importance; but it is one thing to hear of wealth and to ponder in critical mood the fleeting nature of this world’s weal, and quite another to gaze with the eye on the marvellous results of human thrift.  He wandered through lofty and spacious apartments, whose marble arches seemed ever to reveal a fairer scene than had yet met his view.  A mimic rivulet ran from room to room in an alabaster channel, and the spray of perfumed fountains cooled the air.  Flowers bloomed, leafy vines trailed over priceless screens, and countless mirrors repeated the joyous beauty of the place.  He beheld with admiration the gilded and fretted walls and stately domes, the new delights of a palace charmed every sense, and, appealing to poetic fancy, awoke a rapture whose fervency was due less to the entrancement of his present life than to the contemplative habit of one who had first known harmony whilst gazing on the stars, and awaked to the consciousness of beauty among the eternal hills.  The ripple of the streamlet in these palace halls revived a half-forgotten music of the heart that had once responded to the gurgle of a brook.

     “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.”

The sympathies that had once been in unison with the rustling thicket stirred into more definite life when an artificial breeze swept by and stirred the heavy foliage of rare plants.  He had caught in other days notes of Nature’s vast melody.  Stray notes were here made to beat to a smaller measure.  Thus Art interprets Nature.  It was not The Song, but a light and pleasant carol, which pleased the sense of many, and to the ear of the few brought a haunting pain of which they did not know the meaning.  Such a one only sighed and said: 

“In a former birth I was great and good, and my life was sublime.  The ghost of its memory has touched me.”

O melody divine, of fantasy
And frenzied mem’ry wrought, advance
From out the shades; O spectral utterance,
Untwine thy chains, thy fair autocracy
Unveil, have being, declare
Thy state and tuneful sovereignty.

Ye gifted ears,
To whom this burdened, sad creation
Sings, now in tones of exultation
Abruptly broken,
Anon in direst lamentation
Obscurely spoken,
Possess your souls in hope, the time
Is coming when th’ harmonic chime
Of circling spheres in chant sublime
Will lead the music of the seas,
And call the echoes of the breeze
To one triumphal lay
Whose harmony, whose heavenly harmony
Sounding for aye
In loud and solemn benedicite,
Voices the glory of the Central Day,
And through th’ illimitable realms of air
Is borne afar
In wafted echoes that the strain prolong
Through boundless space, and countless worlds