Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Asia: Vols. XXI–XXIII. 1876–79.

India: Ganges, the River

The Hindoo Girl’s Song

By Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838)

The Hindoo girls make a little boat out of a cocoanut shell, place a small lamp and flowers within it, and launch it on the Ganges. If it floats out of sight with its lamp still burning, the omen is prosperous; if it sinks, the love of which it questions is ill-fated.

FLOAT on, float on, my haunted bark,

Above the midnight tide;

Bear softly o’er the waters dark

The hopes that with thee glide.

Float on, float on; thy freight is flowers,

And every flower reveals

The dreaming of my lonely hours,

The hope my spirit feels.

Float on, float on; thy shining lamp,

The light of love, is there;

If lost beneath the waters damp,

That love must then despair.

Float on,—beneath the moonlight, float,

The sacred billows o’er:

Ah, some kind spirit guards my boat,

For it has gained the shore.