Chapter 38 - Page 2

"A dismal time it must have been," yawned Media, "not a dry brook then
in Mardi, not a lake that was not moist. Lachrymose rivulets, and
inconsolable lagoons! Call you this poetry, minstrel?"

"Mohi has something like a tear in his eye," said Yoomy.

"False!" cried Mohi, brushing it aside.

"Who composed that monody?" said Babbalanja. "I have often heard it
before."

"None know, Babbalanja but the poet must be still singing to himself;
his songs bursting through the turf in the flowers over his grave."

"But gentle Yoomy, Adondo is a legendary hero, indefinitely dating
back. May not his monody, then, be a spontaneous melody, that has been
with us since Mardi began? What bard composed the soft verses that our
palm boughs sing at even? Nay, Yoomy, that monody was not written by
man."

"Ah! Would that I had been the poet, Babbalanja; for then had I been
famous indeed; those lines are chanted through all the isles, by
prince and peasant. Yes, Adondo's monody will pervade the ages, like
the low under-tone you hear, when many singers do sing."

"My lord, my lord," cried Babbalanja, "but this were to be truly
immortal;--to be perpetuated in our works, and not in our names. Let
me, oh Oro! be anonymously known!"