Page 195 - Malay sketches

XVI

A MALAY ROMANCE

Every heart in which heaven has set
the lamp of love, whether that heart
inclines to Mosque or Synagogue, if
its name be written in the Book of
Love it is freed from the fear of Hell,
and the hope of Paradise
MCCARTHY'S Omar
JUSTIN
Khayyam
A QUARTER of a century ago there lived on
** the bank of a broad river, just at the point
where stream meets tide, a Malay Raja and his
youthful wife. She has been dead for twenty
years, but in this land of brief regrets her memory
is still green, the fame of her wit and beauty has
become a byword with the people.
She was a girl of royal descent ; her name, Raja
Maimunah. Exceeding fair, for a Malay, slight but
graceful in figure, with very small hands and feet,
an oval face and splendid eyes, glistening blue-
white wells in which floated, lotus-like, the dark
iris, flashing or wooing in changeful expression
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