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Title: Anthology of modern Indian poetry

Editor: Gwendoline Goodwin

Release date: November 17, 2024 [eBook #74751]

Language: English

Original publication: London: John Murray, 1927

Credits: Aaron Adrignola, Tim Lindell, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANTHOLOGY OF MODERN INDIAN POETRY ***

The Wisdom of the East Series

EDITED BY

L. CRANMER-BYNG

Dr. S. A. KAPADIA

ANTHOLOGY OF

MODERN INDIAN POETRY

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

WISDOM OF THE EAST

ANTHOLOGY OF

MODERN INDIAN

POETRY

EDITED BY

GWENDOLINE GOODWIN

LONDON

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W

FIRST EDITION, 1927

Printed in Great Britain by

Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.

CONTENTS

PAGE

PREFACE

9

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

19

AN INVOCATION

23

THE SECRETS OF THE SELF

27

WORSHIP

34

BEYOND THE VERGE OF TIME—STEPS

35

EGO—FIRE

36

THE ARTIST

37

IMAGERY

38

TRANSIENCE—O LONG BLACK HAIR—REVELATION

39

“SPRING THAT IN MY COURTYARD”—“THIS DAY WILL PASS”

40

URVASI

42

OPEN THOU THY DOOR OF MERCY

47

THE DANCER

48

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

49

REMEMBRANCE—THE VISIBLE

50

IN THE LIGHT

51

CALL AND BRING HER

52

BASANTA PANCHAMI

53

A WOMAN’S BEAUTY

54

AN EVENING ON THE LAGOON—AT THE TEMPLE

55

RAKSHA BANDHAN

56

LONGINGS—THOUGHTS

57

THE LOVERS

58

A BLUE DREAM

59

TULIP

60

RETURN TO KHAIRPUR—INDIA: ENTERTAINING TWILIGHT

61

ROSHANARA

66

IN PRAISE OF HENNA

68

IMPERIAL DELHI

69

DIRGE

70

SPRING—CRADLE-SONG

71

JUNE SUNSET

72

BUNKIM CHANDRA CHATTERJI

73

A ROSE OF WOMEN—THE ISLAND GRAVE

75

INVITATION

76

A CHILD’S IMAGINATION

77

EVENING—THE SEA AT NIGHT—LACHHI

78

AZMĒ

79

AWAKE, MY FRIEND

81

MARRIAGE SONG

82

MYSTIC LOVE SONG FROM “THIRTY INDIAN SONGS"

83

THE PUNJAB AUTUMN: THE SEASON OF THE COOLING DEW

84

RÂJHANS (THE PRINCE OF SWANS)

89

LATER LYRICS: POPLAR, BEECH, AND WEEPING WILLOW

90

ORPHIC MYSTERIES: THE YELLOW BUTTERFLY

93

MYVANWY

96

KISMET

99

TANSEN

100

“THE HIGH AMBITION OF THE DROP OF RAIN”

101

“HOW DIFFICULT IS THE THORNY WAY OF STRIFE”

102

“THY BEAUTY FLASHES LIKE A SWORD”

103

“I SHALL NOT TRY TO FLEE THE SWORD OF DEATH”

104

VOICE IN THE AIR

105

“ALL THIS IS RHYTHM”

112

“FRIEND, DWELL THOU WITHIN”—“THOU ART THE ROSE”

113

“SNOW-BLOSSOMS, SNOW-BLOSSOMS”

114

“THE ROSE OF ETERNITY”

116

“THE BLUE OF INDRA”

117

“THE SHADOW OF A FLYING BIRD”

118

LOVE’S SAMĀDHI—A CRADLE SONG

120

THE WAY OF POVERTY

121

THE LAST PRAYER—UNION WITH CHRIST

122

PEACE

123

PREFACE

FRANCIS BACON it was who said, “Prefaces are great wastes of time, and tho’ they seem to proceed of modesty, they are bravery.” It is necessary, however, in the present instance to make a stand against the somewhat sweeping convictions of the Elizabethan master. The call of Youth in India is a hot young call, trumpeting down the ages through a maze of polytheistic tribute, and emerging in the twentieth century with some of its original clearness of sound drowned by a Gargantuan thunder of Western drums. The Indian poet of to-day is torn, like the Indian painter, between admiration for Western models and a desire to mould himself thereon, and an inherent Indian tradition that runs in his veins and will not be denied. Indeed, it is pity to deny it. Sir Edmund Gosse persuaded Sarojini Naidu to tear up her poems about English life and to write of her own Indian bazaars and cities, villages and festivals, for which persuasion we are indeed indebted to Sir Edmund. We of the West do not want from the East poetic edifices built upon a foundation of Yeats and Shelley and Walt Whitman. We want genuine Taj Mahals and Juma Masjids, cameos of rural sweetness and the hopes of faithful hearts. We want to hear the flute of Krishna as Radha heard it, to fall under the spell of the blue god “in the lotus-heart of dreams.” For there is much to learn from the melody of Eastern thought. It is, perhaps, a minor melody born of the mating of Love and Death, but it has its seed in an innate spiritual rapture that no Western veneer can wholly cover.

In the bulk of Indian poetry religious feeling predominates, as is only natural in a country of many but steadfast faiths.

“To act, to think, to feel aright until

He knows his will as one with Allah’s will.”

Subjugation of the Self leading to a merging of that Self with God. India writes largely from the “Inner Vision.” This disallows of foreign influence, but the poet is necessarily inspired as well by an everyday atmosphere which he enriches from the strength of his own perception. The steps of the bathing-ghâts in Calcutta may be of Sheffield cast-iron, but the country that could produce a Taj Mahal—“stone turned into a dream,” D. G. Mukerji calls it—will never lose the innate artistic vision of her soul. So the creative prayers of this mighty cosmopolitan multitude surge upwards in a song of glory till they reach the stars. Love of life is love of art because life is art and art is life. We chase after fleeting perfection, a rosy cloud, a glint of eternity in a lily-pool, a drop of dew trembling on a flower-petal, moments of heaven in worlds of chaos. To catch a mood of Nature and transfer it to paper; to wring from the heart of an instrument one swift emotional phase after another: is it futile? is it useless?

“Am I one of the trees in the night,

Or are the trees human beings?”

asks Harindranath Chattopadhyaya in one of his poems not published here, echoing the cry of Li Po:

“Chuang Chou in a dream became a butterfly

And the butterfly became Chuang Chou at waking:

Which was the real, the butterfly or the man?”

In Indian poetry, the mystic element shines through the outer decorative aspect.

“Our dreams and longings cover deeper dreams

And longings in the silence far away.”

We are roused from the beautiful lyrical lilt of Chattopadhyaya and of his sister, Sarojini Naidu, by the thunder of Muhammad Iqbal’s persuasive eloquence. He is a barrister-at-law at Lahore, an active Moslem opposed to Platonic illusion and non-progressive idealism.

“Plato, the prime ascetic and sage,

Was one of that ancient flock of sheep.

His Pegasus went astray in the darkness of philosophy

And galloped over the mountains of Being.

He was so fascinated by the Ideal

That he made head, eye, and ear of no account.”

Whether one agrees with his outlook or not, the fact remains that one cannot fail to be stirred by the intensely fiery spirit of Iqbal’s rhetorical writing. He is a leader. He sweeps everything before him like a great wind swirling through a forest of pines. He would re-create Islam, an active, non-Imperialistic, non-sensual Islam. In his own words, he is “the voice of the poet of To-morrow.” As Mr. R. A. Nicholson (his translator) says, the book “Asrar-i-Khudi” (Secrets of the Self), from which I have taken the extracts, “presents certain obscurities which no translation can entirely remove.” That is, of course, to European readers or to those not conversant with Persian poetry. For the book was originally written in Persian.

“Although the language of Hind is sweet as sugar,

Yet sweeter is the fashion of Persian speech.”

He is an inspiring philosopher.

“Thou art fire: fill the world with thy glow!

Make others burn with thy burning!

. . . . . .

Up, and re-inspire every living soul!”

I have spoken of the Youth of India, but the contributors to this volume range in age from the twenties to the seventies. There is little need for me to speak of Rabindranath Tagore. Mr. Edward Thompson (to whom I am indebted for the three translations) has acted in a Boswellian capacity, and the poet is as well known in England as are the great poets of our own nationality. I would draw attention, however, to the beautiful concluding lines of “Urvasi”:

“On the night of full moon, when the world brims with laughter,

Memory, from somewhere far away, pipes a flute that brings unrest,

The tears gush out!

Yet in that weeping of the spirit Hope wakes and lives;

Ah, Unfettered One!”

The flute-call of memory bringing restlessness and a strange peace on its liquid cadences. And a dimness of tears to stir the dust of Hope to life. “Ah, Unfettered One!” I have included some translations of Indian songs as sung by native singers, because I thought they might be of interest from an indigenous point of view. Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy, of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Mass., is responsible for their English rendering. The one commencing “Quietly come, O Beauty, come,” has a mystical meaning. We drift then into the Punjab, the Land of Five Waters, and find Puran Singh, the Sikh poet, breathing the musk of God-love through nostrils ever open to receive a spiritual fragrance.

“The dew is falling everywhere,

And wet is every rose.

The gentle breath of heaven blows.”

It blows the perfume of the Beauty that is Worship into the heart of this devout enthusiast. His mind is a casket that holds the most precious gems of the Sikh religion and ideals, and gives them forth to an unenlightened world. Nanak, Gobind, Teg Bahadur, the names of the Ten Masters (whose lives he has written) sound in his ears day and night.

The loneliness of exile rings through the quivering poems of Manmohan Ghose.

“Lost is that country, and all but forgotten

’Mid these chill breezes ...”

All true poets love trees; Manmohan Ghose is no exception:

“Willow sweet, willow sad, willow by the river,

Taught by pensive love to droop, where ceaseless waters shiver.”

Mrs. Pankajini Basu is represented by one poem, “Basanta Panchami,” a description of the famous Spring Festival. One line, in particular, stands out: “Ever sorrowful, ever ill-starred, are we women of Bengal, all of us,” and, one might add, ever devout, ever faithful. The eternal question of Indian womanhood cannot be dismissed with a shrug of the shoulders. Mrs. Naidu’s lines:

“What further need hath she of loveliness

Whom Death hath parted from her lord’s caress?”

seem to strike at the heart of the matter. Time alone will solve a problem which at the moment is very vexed indeed. It would seem almost that in their poems these Indian women express all the fullness of their hearts in love-songs, hymns of conjugal devotion, lamentations, praise of physical beauty, and tributes of faith. Emotional outlets of warm, loyal natures, yet always with the underlying sadness that is the birthright of Hind, like an anthem at evening or the eyes of a convent sister. Melancholy glides like pearly vapour through “The Island Grave” of Sri Aurobindo Ghose:

“And I will meet thee in that lonely place,

Then the grey dawn shall end my hateful days

And death admit me to the silent ways.”

Death, to the Oriental, is a small and yet a great matter. He welcomes rather than fears it. The body, being but the shell of the soul, is of little account, save, perhaps, for its procreative value as a creator of further beings in the image of God. Death, then, is a joyful thing, and there is but a thin line between the wedding-song and the funeral dirge.

The blue bird of truth is flying against a sky of such intense blueness as to be almost indistinguishable—Ananda Acharya’s “blue of Indra.” This poet sends his “snow-blossoms” of Indian thought forth from the cool earth of Norway. He lives there amid his “Arctic Swallows,” and in his later work has grafted Asian feeling, in a curious way, upon a shoot of Scandinavian origin. There is, of course, a strange affinity between the Nordic peoples and the Asian. The strain flowed through Northern Russia, south to Persia, and thence into India, the type gradually changing from blue-eyed, fair-skinned folk to olive skins and “flaming eyes, like thunder skies. So deep and dark....”

Jehangir Jivaji Vakil’s three little poems have not hitherto been published. The one commencing “O long black hair of love” has an almost Japanese brevity, and compresses into four lines quite a wealth of ardent feeling.

India is rich in legendary history and does not lack for romantic and dramatic episodes in her actual chronicles. I have, nevertheless, found little of the narrative style of poetry among the modern poets. Historical and legendary references are occasionally met with, but they are usually incidental, and little use has been made of a richly-equipped storehouse. Adi K. Sett has utilised this method in “Roshanara,” Inayat Khan in “Tansen,” and Tagore (in a measure) in “Urvasi.” Apparently the lyrical style or the sonnet-form has the greatest appeal.

Narayan Vaman Tilak was a Christian mystic. His poems breathe all the fervour of the convert.

“Saith Dasa, Christ, upon Thy pallet-bed

Grant me a little space to lay my head.”

I have included Zahir, Ghalib, and Amir, because, though not modern in a strict sense, as is, say, Fredoon Kabraji, they have been translated by living people, namely, Mrs. J. D. Westbrook and Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan.

Whether this is the dawn-time of a new era of Indian poetic thought, who shall say? These Eastern singers, Bengali, Punjabi, Hindu, Mohammedan, Sikh, Christian, have upon their shoulders a yoke of heavy responsibility. They have to support and become worthy of the mighty tradition that lies behind them. Song should be theirs naturally, but it is one thing to preserve the metre in their own particular tongues and another to wrestle with the technicalities of English. There are many more modern poets in India from whom I might have chosen, but the scope of the book forbids the inclusion of more material.

The Indian twilight descends, gentle and swift, “wizard clocks ring out and rend the calm.” The dark rich blue of night, peridot-studded, swings a baby-moon high above inky palm and gleaming tomb. The poet sits in contemplation. “The lotus dreams upon the lyric melodies of day....”

Gwendoline Goodwin.

Sheffield,

December 8th, 1926.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I beg to acknowledge indebtedness to the following for permissions accorded to reproduce poems:

1. Oxford University Press (Heritage of India Series). (Poems by Indian Women.)

Professor Farquhar, of Manchester University.

Mrs. Margaret Macnicol, Miss D. Whitehouse.

2. Messrs. William Heinemann, Ltd.

Mrs. Sarojini Naidu.

“The Golden Threshold.”

“The Broken Wing.”

“The Bird of Time.”

3. Blackwell (Oxford)

Poems of Manmohan Ghose.

Mr. Laurence Binyon.

4. “Poetry Review” (Mr. Galloway Kyle)

Poems by Mrs. Elsa Kazi.

5. Longmans, Green & Co.

Nanikram Vasanmal Thadani.

“Krishna’s Flute”

6. Adi K. Sett.

“Roshanara.”

7. Srinavasa Varadachari & Co.

Sonnets.

Prof. P. Seshadri, of Benares Hindu University.

8. Indian Press, Ltd. (Allahabad)

Prof. P. Seshadri.

“Vanished Hours.”

“Champak Leaves.”

9. The Sufi Movement (Southampton)

Inayat Khan and Mrs. Jessie Duncan Westbrook.

“Diwan.”

Hindustani Lyrics.

10. J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd.

Puran Singh and Bhai Vir Singh.

“Sisters of the Spinning-Wheel.”

“Nargas.”

11. Jehangir Jivaji Vakil.

(Three poems hitherto unpublished.)

12. Messrs. Ernest Benn, Ltd.

(Augustan Books of Modern Poetry.)

Poems of Rabindranath Tagore.

Mr. Edward Thompson.

Mr. C. F. Andrews.

13. Messrs. Macmillan & Co., Ltd.

“The Secrets of the Self.”

Muhammad Iqbal (Lahore).

Mr. R. A. Nicholson.

Sri Ananda Acharya.

“Book of the Cave” (see Notes).

14. The Brahmakul Gaurisankar (Alvdal, Norway)

Sri Ananda Acharya.

“Saki.”

“Usarika.”

15. Theosophical Publishing House (Adyar, Madras)

Harindranath Chattopadhyaya.

“Feast of Youth.”

Shama’a, Madras

“Out of the Deep Dark Mould.”

“Magic Tree.”

16. Fredoon Kabraji.

17. Messrs. Luzac & Co.

Thirty Indian Songs.

Ananda Coomaraswamy.

18. Association Press (Calcutta)

Poems of Narayan Vaman Tilak.

Mr. D. N. Tilak (Copyright of Marathi originals).

Rev. J. C. Winslow.

19. Sri Aurobindo Ghose (Pondicherry).

EDITORIAL NOTE

THE object of the Editors of this series is a very definite one. They desire above all things that, in their humble way, these books shall be the ambassadors of good-will and understanding between East and West—the old world of Thought and the new of Action. In this endeavour, and in their own sphere, they are but followers of the highest example in the land. They are confident that a deeper knowledge of the great ideals and lofty philosophy of Oriental thought may help to a revival of that true spirit of Charity which neither despises nor fears the nations of another creed and colour.

L. CRANMER-BYNG.

S. A. KAPADIA.

Northbrook Society,

Imperial Institute,

S.W.7.

ANTHOLOGY OF MODERN INDIAN POETRY

AN INVOCATION

O, Thou art as the soul in the body of the universe,

Thou art our soul and Thou art ever fleeing from us.

Thou breathest music into Life’s lute;

Life envies Death when death is for thy sake.

Once more bring comfort to our sad hearts!

Once more dwell in our breasts!

Once more let us hear Thy call to honour!

Strengthen our weak love.

We are oft complaining of destiny,

Thou art of great price and we have naught.

Hide not Thy fair face from the empty-handed!

Sell cheap the love of Salman and Bilál!

Give us the sleepless eye and the passionate heart!

Give us again the nature of quicksilver!

Show unto us one of Thy manifest signs,

That the necks of our enemies may be bowed!

Make this chaff a mountain crested with fire,

Burn with our fire all that is not God!

When the people let the clue of Unity go from their hands,

They fell into a hundred mazes.

We are dispersed like stars in the world;

Though of the same family, we are strange to one another.

Bind again these scattered leaves,

Revive the law of love!

Take us back to serve Thee as of old,

Commit Thy cause to them that love thee!

We are travellers: give us devotion as our goal!

Give us the strong faith of Abraham!

Make us know the meaning of “There is no god”!

Make us acquainted with the mystery of “except Allah”!

I, who burn like a candle for the sake of others,

Teach myself to weep like the candle.

O God! a tear that is heart-enkindling,

Passionful, wrung forth by pain, peace-consuming,

May I sow in the garden, and may it grow into a fire

That washes away the firebrand from the tulip’s robe!

My heart is with yestereve, my eye is on to-morrow:

Amidst the company I am alone.

“Everyone fancies he is my friend,

But my secret thoughts have not escaped from my heart.”

O, where in the wide world is my comrade?

I am the Bush of Sinai: where is my Moses?

I am tyrannous, I have done many a wrong to myself,

I have nourished a flame in my bosom,

A flame that seized the furniture of judgment,

And cast fire on the skirt of discretion,

And lessened with madness the reason,

And burned up the existence of knowledge:

Its blaze enthrones the sun in the sky,

And lightnings encircle it with adoration for ever.

Mine eye fell to weeping, like dew,

Since I was entrusted with that hidden fire.

I taught the candle to burn openly,

While I myself burned unseen by the world’s eye.

At last flames breathed from every hair of me,

Fire dropped from the veins of my thought:

My nightingale picked up the spark-grains

And created a fire-tempered song.

Is the breast of this age without a heart?

Majnún trembles lest Lailá’s howdah be empty.

It is not easy for the candle to throb alone:

Ah! is there no moth worthy of me?

How long shall I wait for one to share my grief?

How long must I search for a confidant?

O Thou whose face lends light to the moon and the stars,

Withdraw Thy fire from my soul!

Take back what Thou hast put in my breast,

Remove the stabbing radiance from my mirror,

Or give me one old comrade

To be the mirror of mine all-burning love!

In the sea wave tosses side by side with wave:

Each hath a partner in its emotion.

In heaven star consorts with star,

And the bright moon lays her head on the knees of Night.

Morning touches Night’s dark side,

And To-day throws itself against To-morrow.

One river loses its being in another,

A waft of air dies in perfume.

There is dancing in every nook of the wine-house,

Madman dances with madman.

Howbeit in Thine essence Thou art single,

Thou hast decked out for Thyself a whole world.

I am as the tulip of the field,

In the midst of a company I am alone.

I beg of Thy grace a sympathising friend,

An adept in the mysteries of my nature,

A friend endowed with madness and wisdom,

One that knoweth not the phantom of vain things,

That I may confide my lament to his soul

And see again my face in his heart.

His image I will mould of mine own clay,

I will be to him both idol and worshipper.

Muhammad Iqbal.

THE SECRETS OF THE SELF

PROLOGUE

When the world-illuming sun rushed upon Night like a brigand,

My weeping bedewed the face of the rose,

My tears washed away sleep from the eye of the narcissus,

My passion wakened the grass and made it grow.

The Gardener taught me to sing with power,

He sowed a verse and reaped a sword.

In the soil he planted only the seed of my tears,

And wove my lament with the garden, as warp and woof.

Tho’ I am but a mote, the radiant sun is mine:

Within my bosom are a hundred dawns.

My dust is brighter than Jamshid’s cup,

It knows things that are yet unborn in the world.

My thought hunted down and slung from the saddle a deer

That has not yet leaped forth from the covert of non-existence.

Fair is my garden ere yet the leaves are green:

Full-blown roses are hidden in the skirt of my garment.

I struck dumb the musicians where they were gathered together,

I smote the heartstrings of all that heard me,

Because the lute of my genius hath a rare melody:

Even to comrades my song is strange.

I am born in the world as a new sun,

I have not learned the ways and fashions of the sky:

Not yet have the stars fled before my splendour,

Not yet is my quicksilver astir;

Untouched is the sea by my dancing rays,

Untouched are the mountains by my crimson hue.

The eye of existence is not familiar with me;

I rise trembling, afraid to show myself.

From the East my dawn arrived and routed Night,

A fresh dew settled on the rose of the world.

I am waiting for the votaries that rise at dawn:

Oh, happy they who shall worship my fire!

I have no need of the ear of To-day,

I am the voice of the poet of To-morrow.

My own age does not understand my deep meanings;

My Joseph is not for this market.

I despair of my old companions,

My Sinai burns for sake of the Moses who is coming.

Their sea is silent, like dew,

But my dew is storm-ridden, like the ocean.

My song is of another world than theirs:

This bell calls other travellers to take the road.

How many a poet after his death

Opened our eyes when his own were closed,

And journeyed forth again from nothingness

When roses blossomed o’er the earth of his grave!

Albeit caravans have passed through this desert,

They passed, as a camel steps, with little sound.

But I am a lover: loud crying is my faith:

The clamour of Judgment Day is one of my minions.

My song exceeds the range of the chord,

Yet I do not fear that my lute will break.

’Twere better for the waterdrop not to know my torrent,

Whose fury should rather madden the sea.

No river will contain my Oman:

My flood requires whole seas to hold it.

Unless the bud expand into a bed of roses,

It is unworthy of my spring-cloud’s bounty.

Lightnings slumber within my soul,

I sweep over mountain and plain.

Wrestle with my sea, if thou art a plain;

Receive my lightning, if thou art a Sinai.

The Fountain of Life hath been given me to drink,

I have been made an adept of the mystery of Life.

The speck of dust was vitalised by my burning song:

It unfolded wings and became a firefly.

No one hath told the secret which I will tell

Or threaded a pearl of thought like mine.

Come, if thou wouldst know the secret of everlasting life!

Come, if thou wouldst win both earth and heaven!

The old Guru of the Sky taught me this lore,

I cannot hide it from my comrades.

O Saki! arise and pour wine into the cup,

Clear the vexation of Time from my heart!

The sparkling liquor that flows from Zemzem—

Were it a beggar, a king would pay homage to it.

It makes thought more sober and wise,

It makes the keen eye keener,

It gives to a straw the weight of a mountain,

And to foxes the strength of lions.

It causes dust to soar to the Pleiades

And a drop of water swell to the breadth of the sea.

It turns silence into the din of Judgment Day,

It makes the foot of the partridge red with blood of the hawk.

Arise and pour pure wine into my cup,

Pour moonbeams into the dark night of my thought,

That I may lead home the wanderer

And imbue the idle looker-on with restless impatience;

And advance hotly on a new quest

And become known as the champion of a new spirit;

And be to people of insight as the pupil to the eye,

And sink into the ear of the world, like a voice;

And exalt the worth of Poesy

And sprinkle the dry herbs with my tears.

Inspired by the genius of the Master of Rum,

I rehearse the sealed book of secret lore.

His soul is the source of the flames,

I am but as the spark that gleams for a moment.

His burning candle consumed me, the moth;

His wine overwhelmed my goblet.

The Master of Rum transmuted my earth to gold

And clothed my barren dust with beauty.

The grain of sand set forth from the desert,

That it might win the radiance of the sun.

I am a wave, and I will come to rest in his sea,

That I may make the glistening pearl mine own.

I who am drunken with the wine of his song

Will draw life from the breath of his words.

’Twas night: my heart would fain lament,

The silence was filled with my cries to God.

I was complaining of the sorrows of the world

And bewailing the emptiness of my cup.

At last mine eye could endure no more,

Broken with fatigue it went to sleep.

There appeared the Master, formed in the mould of Truth,

Who wrote the Koran of Persia.

He said, “O frenzied lover,

Take a draught of love’s pure wine.

Strike the chords of thine heart and rouse a tumultuous strain,

Dash thine head against the cupping-glass and thine eye against the lancet!

Make thy laughter the source of a hundred sighs,

Make the hearts of men bleed with thy tears!

How long wilt thou be silent, like a bud?

Sell thy fragrance cheap, like the rose!

Tongue-tied, thou art in pain:

Cast thyself upon the fire, like rue!

Like the bell, break silence at last, and from every limb

Utter forth a lamentation!

Thou art fire: fill the world with thy glow!

Make others burn with thy burning!

Proclaim the secrets of the old wine-seller;

Be thou a surge of wine, and the crystal cup thy robe!

Shatter the mirror of fear,

Break the bottles in the bazaar!

Like the reed-flute, bring a message from the reeds;

Give to Majnún a message from Lailá!

Create a new style for thy song,

Enrich the feast with thy piercing strains!

Up, and re-inspire every living soul!

Say ‘Arise!’ and by that word quicken the living!

Up, and set thy feet on another path;

Put aside the passionate melancholy of old!

Become familiar with the delight of singing;

O bell of the caravan, awake!”

At these words my bosom was enkindled

And swelled with emotion like the flute;

I rose like music from the string

To prepare a Paradise for the ear.

I unveiled the mystery of the Self

And disclosed its wondrous secret.

My being was as an unfinished statue,

Uncomely, worthless, good for nothing.

Love chiselled me: I became a man

And gained knowledge of the nature of the universe.

I have seen the movement of the sinews of the sky,

And the blood coursing in the veins of the moon.

Many a night I wept for Man’s sake

That I might tear the veil from Life’s mysteries,

And extract the secret of Life’s constitution

From the laboratory of phenomena.

I who give beauty to this night, like the moon,

Am as dust in devotion to the pure Faith [Islam]—

A Faith renowned in hill and dale,

Which kindles in men’s hearts a flame of undying song:

It sowed an atom and reaped a sun,

It harvested a hundred poets like Rumi and Attar.

I am a sigh: I will mount to the heavens;

I am a breath, yet am I sprung of fire.

Driven onward by high thoughts, my pen

Cast abroad the secret of this veil,

That the drop may become co-equal with the sea

And the grain of sand grow into a Sahara.

Poetising is not the aim of this masnavi,

Beauty-worshipping and love-making is not its aim.

I am of India: Persian is not my native tongue;

I am like the crescent moon: my cup is not full.

Do not seek from me charm of style in exposition,

Do not seek from me Khansar and Isfahan.

Although the language of Hind is sweet as sugar,

Yet sweeter is the fashion of Persian speech.

My mind was enchanted by its loveliness,

My pen became as a twig of the Burning Bush.

Because of the loftiness of my thoughts,

Persian alone is suitable to them.

O Reader, do not find fault with the wine-cup,

But consider attentively the taste of the wine.

Muhammad Iqbal.

WORSHIP

You flood my music with your autumn silence

And burn me in the flame-burst of your spring.

Lo! through my beggar-being’s tattered garments

Resplendent shines your crystal heart, my King!

Like a rich song you chant your red-fire sunrise,

Deep in my dreams, and forge your white-flame moon ...

You hide the crimson secret of your sunset,

And the pure golden message of your moon.

You fashion cool-grey clouds within my body,

And weave your rain into a diamond mesh.

The Universal Beauty dances, dances

A glimmering peacock in my flowering flesh!

Harindranath Chattopadhyaya.

BEYOND THE VERGE OF TIME

Our dreams and longings cover deeper dreams

And longings in the silence far away.

All things on earth, sweet winds and shining clouds,

Waters and stars and the lone moods of men,

Are cool green echoes of the voice that sings

Beyond the verge of Time. Between two cries of aught,

Of aught on earth, wakes the eternal fire

Wherein the destiny of heaven is wrought,

For what is heaven but the earth grown full,

And God but man unshadowed and afar?

Harindranath Chattopadhyaya.

STEPS

Each moment when we feel alone

In this great world of rush and riot

Is as a jewelled stepping-stone

Which leads into the House of Quiet.

Within it dwell the ancient seers

Beyond unreal griefs and cares,

Beyond unreal smiles and tears,

Beyond the need of chant and prayers.

Harindranath Chattopadhyaya.

EGO

A Beauty that ever eludes these fleshly eyes

And fingers and lips ...

Ere I can catch one gleam of the starry skies

The mystery slips,

Leaving an empty, desolate, mocking moan

In the little heart that greedily sought to hold

Vast beauty within its shadowy grasp and own

Elusive, starry gold!

Who are you, feeble, shadow-robed elf,

Striving again and again in vain to capture

Wealth of the deep, the shining, ineffable rapture

Which is the Self beyond self?

Harindranath Chattopadhyaya.

FIRE

Kindle your glimmering lamp in the infinite space, O Love!

Let the dark shadows dance in the burning depths of mine eyes.

I am athirst for one glimpse of your beautiful face, O Love!

Veiled in the mystical silence of stars and the purple of skies.

Thrill me with radiant rapture, O Love! of your ravishing flute,

Folding my silence in song, and my sorrow in silver eclipse,

Shaping my heart into flower, and the flower of my heart into fruit

Meet for your orchards of light, and touch of your luminous lips.

Cast in the shadowy deeps of my being, your love, like a spark,

Fan it to magical flame, till my dead heart burst into fire,

Swing like a censer, my dream of devotion, O Love! through the dark,

Turn into tumults of incense my richly-pulsating desire!

Harindranath Chattopadhyaya.

THE ARTIST

The selfsame radiant ecstasy

Which wrought the tempest’s giant wrath

Has painted gorgeous dream-designs

So delicately on the moth.

The selfsame luminous agony

Which shaped the lightning’s fiery claw

Has carved in utmost tenderness

A summer flower without a flaw.

The selfsame motherhood which made

The awful mystery of death

Has built the body of a child

And lit its limbs with golden breath.

The selfsame miracle which moves

In silent mystery apart

Has struck the secret melody

Which dances shyly in my heart.

Harindranath Chattopadhyaya.

IMAGERY

He has fashioned the stars and the moons to the music

Of innermost-flowering joy and desire,

He has tried his own love for himself through the ages

By flooding his limbs with unquenchable fire

Of creation that dances and bubbles and flutters

In peacocks, in seas, and the hearts of the birds.

Behind the rich silence of red-running sunsets

And cool-coloured sundawns he utters his words.

He is finding for ever his infinite fullness

In blossoming buds and the withering flowers.

He shapes through the heart of the world his Ideal

So white in the midst of the many-hued hours.

He weaves a fine trammel of marvellous colours

Around and about him in utter delight,

Till straight through the darkness his laughter comes lambent,

Birdlike from a cage in a freedom of flight.

Harindranath Chattopadhyaya.

I

TRANSIENCE

Forgive this wrong:

That of your beauty I have made

Only a passing song,

Only a white-flower song that will fade

Ere I have time to lay it beneath

The shapèd beauty of your feet.

Jehangir Jivaji Vakil.

II

O LONG BLACK HAIR

O long black hair of love,

In your dark shades a dove,

My heart, circles in rings,

Beating white wings.

Jehangir Jivaji Vakil.

REVELATION

O, I have dreamt on many rain-dim eves

Of Beauty folded in the flowers and leaves,

Spraying the grass with laughter as with light

Of shaken pearls that lit her hair’s dark night;

But never dreamed her eyes so deep might be

As those with which last eve you gazed at me.

Jehangir Jivaji Vakil.

SPRING THAT IN MY COURTYARD

Spring that in my courtyard used to make

Such riot once, and buzzing laughter lift,

With heaped drift—

Pomegranate-flowers,

Kanchan, parul, rain of palas-showers;

Spring whose new twigs stirred the woods awake,

With rosy kisses maddening all the sky,[1]

Seeks me out to-day with soundless feet,

Where I sit alone. Her steadfast gaze

Goes out to where the fields and heavens meet;

Beside my silent cottage, silently

She looks and sees the greenness swoon and die

Into the azure haze.

Rabindranath Tagore.

THIS DAY WILL PASS

I know this day will pass,

This day will pass—[2]

That one day, some day,

The dim sun with tender smiling

Will look in my face,

Looking his last farewell.

Beside the way the flute will sound,

The kine will graze on the river-bank,

The children will play in the courtyards,

The birds will sing on.

Yet this day will pass,

This day will pass.

This is my prayer,

My prayer to Thee:

That ere I go I may learn

Why the green Earth,

Lifting her eyes to the sky,

Called me to her;

Why the silence of the Night

Told me of the stars,

Why the Day’s glory

Raised waves in my soul.

This is my prayer to Thee.

When Earth’s revolutions

For me are ended,

In the finishing of my song

Let me pause a moment,

That I may fill my basket

With the flowers and fruits of the Six Seasons;[3]

That in the light of this life

I may see Thee in going,

That I may garland Thee in going

With the garland from my own throat—

When Earth’s revolutions for me are ended.

Rabindranath Tagore.

URVASI[4]

Thou art not Mother, art not Daughter, art not Bride!

Thou beautiful, comely One,

O Dweller in Paradise, Urvasi!

When Evening descends on the pastures, drawing about her tired body her golden cloth,

Thou lightest the evening lamp within no home.

With hesitant, wavering steps, with throbbing breast and downcast look,

Thou dost not go, smiling, fearful, to any belovèd’s bed,

In the hushed midnight.

Like the rising Dawn, thou art unveiled,

Unshrinking One!

Like some stemless flower, blooming in thyself,

When didst thou blossom, Urvasi?

That primal Spring, thou didst arise from the churning of Ocean,[5]

In thy right hand nectar, venom in thy left.

The swelling, mighty Sea, like a serpent tamed with spells,

Drooping his thousand, towering hoods,

Fell at thy feet!

White as the kunda[6] blossom, a naked beauty, adored by the King of Gods,

Thou flawless One!

Wast thou never bud, never maiden of tender years,

O eternally youthful Urvasi?

Sitting alone, under whose dark roof

Didst thou know childhood’s play, toying with gems and pearls?

At whose side, in some chamber lit with the flashing of gems,

Lulled by the chant of the sea-waves, didst thou sleep, in coral bed,

A smile on thy pure face?

That moment when thou awakedst into the universe, thou wast framed of youth,

In full-blown beauty!

From age to age thou hast been the world’s beloved,

O unsurpassed in loveliness, Urvasi!

Breaking their meditation, sages lay at thy feet the fruits of their penance;

Smitten with thy glance, the three worlds[7] grow restless with youth;

The blinded winds blow thine intoxicating fragrance around;

Like the black bee, honey-drunken, the infatuated poet wonders, with greedy heart,

Lifting chants of wild jubilation!

While thou ... thou goest with jingling anklets and waving skirts,

Restless as lightning!

In the assembly of Gods, when thou dancest in ecstasy of joy,

O swaying Wave, Urvasi!

The companies of billows in mid-ocean swell and dance, beat on beat;

In the crests of the corn the skirts of Earth tremble;

From thy necklace stars fall off, in the sky;

Suddenly in the breast of man the heart forgets itself,

The blood dances!

Suddenly in the horizon thy zone bursts,

Ah, wild in abandon!

On the Sunrise Mount of Heaven thou art the embodied Dawn,

O world-enchanting Urvasi!

The slimness of thy form is washed with the tears of the Universe;

The ruddy hue of thy feet is painted with the heart’s blood of the three worlds;

Thy tresses disrobed from their braid, thou hast placed thy light feet,

Thy lotus-feet, on the lotus of the blossomed

Desires of the universe!

Endless are thy masques in the mind’s heaven,

O Comrade of dreams!

Ah, hear what crying and weeping everywhere rises for thee,

O cruel, deaf Urvasi!

Ah, will that Ancient Prime ever revisit this earth?

From the shoreless, unfathomed deep wilt thou ever rise again, with wet locks?

First in the First Dawn that Form will show!

In the startled gaze of the universe all thy limbs will weep,

The waters flowing from them!

Suddenly the vast Sea, in songs never heard before,

Will thunder with its waves!

She will not return, she will not return! That Moon of Glory has set,

She has made her home on the Mount of Setting,[8] has Urvasi!

Therefore to-day, on earth, with the joyous breath of Spring

Mingles the long-drawn sigh of some eternal separation!

On the night of full moon, when the world brims with laughter,

Memory, from somewhere far away, pipes a flute that brings unrest,

The tears gush out!

Yet in that weeping of the spirit Hope wakes and lives;

Ah, Unfettered One!

Rabindranath Tagore.

OPEN THOU THY DOOR OF MERCY

All my guilt of old, sin upon sin, put far, far away. Give, O Lord, give in my heart the melody of a new song.

To stir to life my withered, unfeeling heart, near to death and poor, play thy melody on the bīnā, taking ever a new tune.

As in Nature thy sweetness overflows, so let thy compassion wake in my heart.

In the midst of all things may thy loving face float before my eyes. May no rebel thought against thy wish ever wake in my heart.

Day by day, before I set foot in life’s forest, may I crave thy blessing and so advance, my Lord.

Setting thy commands upon my head, may I with unfaltering care accomplish my every task in the remembrance of thy feet.

Giving to thee the fruit of my task fulfilled, at the end of day may my wearied spirit and body find rest.

Hurrying have I come from far away, knowing thee compassionate. A hundred hindrances there were to my coming. How many thorns fill the path to my goal. So, to-day, behold! my heart is wounded, my life is dark. Hurrying have I come from far away, knowing thee compassionate.

Open thou thy door of mercy. My raft of life drifts on the boundless ocean. Fearlessness art thou, and ever powerful. Nought have I, I am weak and poor. My heart is thirsting for thy lotus feet. The day is now far spent. Open thou thy door of mercy. My raft of life drifts on the boundless ocean.[9]

Hemantabālā Dutt.

Tr. Miss Whitehouse.

THE DANCER

Lo! the heavy rain has come! With loosened tresses densely dark, lo! the sky is covered. Lightnings rend the thick darkness over the mountains. All around, to my heart’s content, I see that beauty has burst forth.

See, frolicsome, she pours forth her loveliness in a thousand streams! Her raiment, hastily flung around her in disarray, mad passion in her eyes, with the voice of the pāpiyā, full of sweetness and pity, she sings.

Slowly move her feet. Slipping, slipping, falls her loosely hanging scarf. Her heart throbs with tumultuous feeling. As if a flood of beauty overflows, her green jacket of emerald grass displays the hue of her radiant beauty all around.

The anklets on her feet, keeping time, ring out in swift succession, as if they were sweet cymbals. Round her lovely throat hangs her chain of emerald parrots. The rain has ceased and she garbs herself in silken robes broidered with diamond raindrops.

She gladdens the eye. On the treetops birds play on golden tambourines. Is the dancer dancing in Indra’s hall, casting restless glances here and there? Urbasī[10] puts off the chain of jewels from her breast.

How gay her laughter! How fair a dance her tinkling footsteps weave! Her bracelets and bangles circle glittering. She is girdled with melody of murmuring swans. For her earth and sky swoon away, overflowing with love.

Her hands touched the bīnā[11] and by her spell enthralled my infatuated heart. Tears stream from my eyes; infatuation floods my heart. The witch to-day has melted my timid heart. Lo! the heavy rain has come.

Nirupamā Debī.

Tr. Miss Whitehouse.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Thee among all men do I honour;

Thee among all men do I know.

Lo! in the beauty of all thee do I see.

In the mouth of all I have heard, I have heard

The sweet voice of thy lips.

Thee this time I have sought and found;

Thee amongst all do I worship;

Lo! I for all have given my life.

To the work of all amongst all

I have devoted my heart.[12]

Nirupamā Debī.

Tr. Miss Whitehouse.

REMEMBRANCE

To-day I shall not indulge in lovers’ quarrels.

I shall not open the ledger and calculate debit and credit.

Only, once again, I shall fill my heart with remembrance of thee.[13]

Priyambadā Debī.

Tr. Miss Whitehouse.

THE VISIBLE

Dearest, I know that thy body is but transitory; that the kindled life, thy shining eyes, shall be quenched by the touch of death, I know; that this thy body, the meeting-place of all beauty, in seeing which I count my life well-lived, shall become but a heap of bones, I know. Yet I love thy body. Day by day afresh through it have I satisfied a woman’s love and desire by serving thy feet and worshipping thee. On days of good omen I have decked thee with a flower-garland; on days of woe I have wiped away with my sārī end thy tears of grief. O my lord, I know that thy soul is with the Everlasting One, yet waking suddenly some nights I have wept in loneliness, thinking how thou didst drive away my fear, clasping me to thy breast. And so I count thy body as the chief goal of my love, as very heaven.[14]

Priyambadā Debī.

Tr. Miss Whitehouse.

IN THE LIGHT

We are indeed children of Light. What an endless mart goes on in the Light! In the Light is our sleeping and waking, the play of our life and death.

Beneath one great canopy, in the ray of one great sun, slowly, very slowly, burn the unnumbered lamps of life.

In the midst of this unending Light I lose myself; amidst this intolerable radiance I wander like one blind.

We are indeed children of Light. Why then do we fear when we see the Light? Come, let us look all around and see, here no man hath cause for any fear.

In this boundless ocean of Light, if a tiny lamp goes out, let it go; who can say that it will not burn again?

Mrs. Kāminī Roy.

Tr. Miss Whitehouse.

CALL AND BRING HER

She went on the wrong way; she has come back again; afar off she stands, her head bowed down with shame and fear; she does not step forward, she cannot raise her eyes—go near, take her hand, call her and bring her.

To-day turn not your face away in silent reproach; to-day let eyes and words be filled with the nectar of love. What good will come from pouring scorn on the past? Think of her dark future, take her by the hand and bring her.

Lest for lack of love this shamed soul fling away repentance, bring her, call and bring her. She has come to give herself up; bind her fast with loving arms; if she goes to-day, what if she never comes again?

By one day’s neglect, one day’s contempt and anger, you will lose a life for ever. Do you not purpose to give life? Neglect is a poisoned arrow; with sorrowing pardon bring her, call and bring her.

Mrs. Kāminī Roy.

Tr. Miss Whitehouse.

BASANTA PANCHAMI[15]

To-day, after a year, on the sacred fifth day, Nature has flung away her worn raiment, and with new jewels, see, with fresh buds and new shoots she has begemmed herself and smiles. The birds wing their way, singing with joy; ah, how lovely! The black bee hums as if with sound of “Ulu! ulu!” he wished good fortune to Nature. The south breeze seems to say as it flits from house to house, “To-day Bīnāpāni[16] comes here to Bengal.” Arrayed in guise that would enrapture even sages, maid Nature has come to worship thy feet, O propitious one! See, O India, at this time all pay no heed to fear of plague, famine, earthquake; all put away pain and grief and gloom; to-day all are drunk with pleasure. For a year Nature was waiting in hope for this day to come. Many folk in many a fashion now summon thee, O white-armed one; I also have a mind to worship. Thy two feet are red lotuses; but, say, with what gift shall we worship thee, O mother Bīnāpāni? Ever sorrowful, ever ill-starred are we women of Bengal, all of us. Yet if thou have mercy, this utterly dependent one will worship thee with the gift of a single tear of devotion shed on thy lotus feet. Graciously accept that, and in mercy, O white-armed one, grant this blessing on my head on this propitious, sacred day, that this life may be spent in thy worship, Mother.

Pankajinī Basu.

Tr. Miss Whitehouse.

A WOMAN’S BEAUTY

Round the black eyes are eyebrows looking like a bow,

They are not frightened at all, and they shoot their arrows with certainty.

Seeing the precious ear-rings with pearls and beautiful settings,

Even the moon with all the stars is filled with shame.

I cannot describe the beauty of the lips, cheeks, teeth, and nose,

Even Śesh Nāg,[17] seeing the beautiful hair, sighs deeply.

Śrī Sarasvatī Devī.

Tr. Mrs. Keay.

AN EVENING ON THE LAGOON

Withdrawn in silence from the raging sea,

Behind the dark and waving grove of palm

In glorious solitude at even calm

We glide at water’s edge, towards the lea

Away from busy haunts; Eternity

And Love, the burden of our rapturous psalm,

As ’neath the star-lit heaven we breathe the balm

Of Nature’s stillness, lulling you and me

To dream in soft ethereal realms of bliss

Where flits no darkening shadow, dwells no care

And all is sweetness and ecstatic light,

The plighted faith renewed with every kiss

Of fervent gratitude for all our share

Of blessed weal in life, by day and night.

P. Seshadri.

AT THE TEMPLE

Three little girls were on the temple-stair

Waiting for worship at the inner shrine;

Their tiny hands betrayed a hidden sign

Of weariness, devoid of strength to bear

Their wealth of luscious fruit and offerings rare—

But still they stood. “What shall the Gods assign

To crown your lives?” I asked, “what blessings fine

Will cheer with happiness your faces fair?”

“A mass of glittering jewels,” said one child,

“Bracelet and necklace, shining gold waistband

And pearl ear-drop.” “Fine robes of richest lace

And gayest foam-spun silk,” another willed.

The third, with head bent down and trembling hand,

Whispered, “A lovely partner on life’s ways.”

P. Seshadri.

RAKSHA BANDHAN

A piece of silken tassel tipped with gold,

Tied round the hand by loving sister’s hands,

A sacred day in Sravan, when the lands

Are bathed in welcome rain, is said to hold

A potent charm for good. From days of old

This pretty faith has come and happy bands

Of brothers still pay heed to its commands

One day each year. Who will be rashly bold

And flout this festival as void of worth—

An ancient mummery—to which man shows

His slavish piety? Let him, who knows

Of beings more devoted than the fair,

Of wishes purer than a sister’s care,

And stronger powers than woman’s love on earth.

P. Seshadri.

LONGINGS

Were I a mighty Master swaying Art

In all her lovely forms surpassing fair

And robed in magic mystery, aware

Of cunning artist-craft, a mind and heart

Aglow with Beauty’s sacred spark, a part

Of God’s creative light! If I could share

The gift of breathing life-infusing air

In canvas, draw thy rapturous sweetness, start

The portrait beaming, bright in loveliness;

The sculptor’s skill—to shape thy limbs divine

In living marble, show thy beauty’s prime!

Shall I encrowned with laurel, sing for Time,

Eternity, and Universe, enshrine

Thy name for ages, scorning storm and stress?

P. Seshadri.

THOUGHTS

When midnight hours know not the peace of sleep

But drudge in trembling hope for envied fame,

In ghostly solitude before a flame

Of glimmering light, whose sombre rays out-peep

To view the city wrapped in silence deep,

Midst weird and darkly waving groves of palm;

When wizard clocks ring out and rend the calm

With strides of Time—their thrilling voices creep

Along the soul; my mind with labour worn,

Or grappling with a knot, delights to stand

In stillness, yearning forth to clasp with love

Thy beauteous form—and then, Spring opes above!

With blossom’d flow’r and chirping bird, the land

Smiles ’neath the sunlit hues the heavens adorn!

P. Seshadri.

THE LOVERS

From the rose-gardens of Time, fragrant and fresh, in ecstasies of light—Day has come! How many an age of silent love hath breathed and breathed upon his cheeks that tender flush of rose?

The blue in his eyes—from what lakes of enchantment hath he drunk? The radiant colours of his thought—from what infinite wonder hath he made? The glory of his love for whom, for whom hath he brought? For whom, for whom the music of his clouds, his winds, his birds? The secrets of his soul for whom, for whom?

A Lotus-bud has opened; ere she was born the pain of a vast music did fill and fill her soul with a vain constant hope; in the ecstasy of that pain she bloomed into flower.

The Lotus dreams upon the lyric melodies of Day.

In the sunset hush of evening she folds her petals upon the memories of Day, enwoven with her fragrant devotions.

In the secrecy of Night she sings her praise, making the deeps of the dark melodious.

The glory of his love for whom, for whom doth he bring? For whom, for whom the music of his clouds, his winds, his birds?

The secrets of his soul for whom, for whom?

Fredoon Kabraji.

A BLUE DREAM

Where her two lips

Meet or part,

Leaps all my heart

Like the swift ship’s

Lurch on the lucent wave—

Past peril and the grave!

Where her two eyes open or close

Upon the rose-kissed snows

Of her face,

From my soul doth rise

Of its grace

A white star in their skies!

But if she smile ...

Or weave of her mouth a word,

Swiftly a light steals

Half my mind, while

Her word falls all unheard!

And a blue mist reels

Half curtaining my mind,

As a blue dream reels

In the heart of the blind:

Circling a remembrance

Of meadows and streams,

Of blossoms that open and lights that dance,

And passions that struggle to live in dreams!

Fredoon Kabraji.

TULIP

Tulip, tell me, what do you hold in your cup?

I hold in my cup the magic that swells the thirst of your soul, O Mother, when you look on the form of your child; the opiate that fills your dream, Mother, with the awe of the Unknown!

But, Tulip, tell me, why do you guard your magic beyond the wing of melody?

Because, ere Thought was, a kiss of Love did capture Death in the Seed of Life. That is why no melody of Life can hold all the magic in my cup, Mother; that is why Love cannot hold your child in Life alone!

Fredoon Kabraji.

RETURN TO KHAIRPUR

Thy greens grow pearls, thy sunsets roses fair;

My wandering heart returned to stay with thee,

In shades of eve, to breathe thy cooler air,

That brings refreshment, promised long to me.

I love thy water-wheels, that sing to sleep

The playful twilight, Autumn’s moody child,

The flames that from thy fields and pinfolds leap

Like lights that lead the hearts by Pan beguiled.

I love thy country maids with water-jars

Whose graceful coveys rural charms enhance.

I love thy palms that gaze at distant stars,

And upward draw the earth-encumbered glance.

I love thy lake with silver trailing flowers,

Whose wavelets fondly hold the starry skies;

The moon, entranced by calm of midnight hours,

In violet bed on lily-petals lies.

No more the eyes of homesick longings pine

To watch the sphere remote where stars abound,

But, like thy lake that holds its love divine,

My heart within hath longed-for heaven found.

Elsa Kazi.

INDIA—ENTERTAINING TWILIGHT

To India’s comely cottage Twilight hied:

“Salam, my lass!” resplendent Twilight cried:

“A sumptuous fare prepare! ... since noon I tried

To come this way ... but ah! the glowing day did stay

With thee!... Fresh milk and fried chapatis bring;

Do not forget thy hubble-bubble, dear,

For lots of dreamy cheer!

From out thy hair the withered lily fling;

Don fine array, with pearls thy tresses lay, and play

Thy vīnā, dance and sing!

One stolen hour is mine; that little while

With haunting notes of suri-raag beguile ...

And let me see thy flaming eyes, as thunder skies

So deep and dark, with mystic lightnings bright;

With ‘Duhals’ wake what slumbering lies, the past let rise

All yesterdays to pageant gay, invite ...

Be swift, my sweet!

The meat and chutney let us eat ...

The hour, my sweet,

Is fleet; from night I must retreat!

Already muezzin’s mellow call resounds in mango grove;

And temple bells, that wake the gods, the hearts to worship move;

Come hither, dear!... The moments flee!

Salam, my love,

Salam!”

And India, sun-burnt India, sweetly blushed;

“Salam! I’ll hasten!” answered she; and brushed

From off her braid the faded lily—crushed

By day’s embrace; she sped, with joy, her face a-blaze,

To milk the goats, to fry the cakes in ghee;

Cabob, pullau, the dates and honey brought

And hubble-bubble sought

With smiles of Sindian hospitality.

With peri-grace she soared about the place, to trace

Each thing that added glee

To Twilight’s hour ... a rich repast she spread

Before her guest, who sliced the mangoes red

’Neath palms, beside the well and stream ... his eyes a-gleam

With dusk, he watched where night in forests hid

And vexed with prying silver beam his crimson dream,

While India, humming low, her braids undid.

With rustling sound

Unbound, her tresses sought the ground;

With silvery sound

She wound her pearls in orient found ...

Her silk-apparel jasmin-decked, kissed rugs of golden cloth;

With henna’d hands she swirled her veil, as frail as wings of moth;

Her vīnā struck, with bended knee:

“Salam,” she quoth:

“Salam!”

She shot as lightning up ... then paused and smiled;

Then round she spun in trance, as dervish wild;

In rainbow hue she flew, with flowers piled;

A flame a-whirl, with passion red, each curl a-twirl,

As Indra’s temple-dancer, maddening hearts

Her lips with kisses scarlet!—Eyes aglow

Now moved she sly and slow

As Punjab tigress ere for prey she starts ...

Then did unfurl a smock as white as pearl ... a girl

Of pious Southern parts

She turned, gazellean-soft and meek her glance,

The rosary and censer graced her dance;

A fragrant bud of womanhood, divinely good;

But soon her measure ceased ... with rhythmic thrill

In Delhi’s wealth arrayed she stood, in soaring mood

Then danced again, to show her perfect skill!

With flourish bold

And gold a-flash, now anklets told,

Her footsteps bold

Controlled a battle march of old!

She forward dashed as amazon of Rajput’s desert side,

Her eyes with valour all a-flame, so proudly did she stride:

“Wah! Wah!” so Twilight cheered ... and she:

“Salam,” replied:

“Salam!”

Her Jadoo-veil now changed the scene ... and lo!

In clouds she danced thro’ Kashmeer’s mountainsnow,

Thro’ jungle glooms and tombs of gold below;

By Ganges led, where orchards blossoms shed, she sped

’Mid Koels as Gopi, or as Rama’s queen ...

With shimmering ivory limbs, and rubied brow

As Moghul princess now

She sat ’mid slaves on throne of Jasper sheen.

Now made her bed on elephant’s broad head, and fled

As Jin thro’ plantains green.

Then rose as butterfly from out her shawl

All poised o’er lucid lakes of Taj Mahal.—

The hour had slipped, and night at last approached so fast;

And Twilight donned his turban, chilled with fright ...

The hookah-stick, he dropped aghast, and India cast

Her jewelled slipper at her guardian Night

Who gently sailed,

And trailed the stars ... but Twilight quailed

And westward sailed!

All veiled in mists he drooped and paled!

Her lacquered cradle India spread for moonlit night to rest,

Namaskar made with folded hands! ... half serious, half a-jest,

She fibbered: “Twilight hit at thee ...

Salam, my best

Salam!”

Elsa Kazi.

ROSHANARA

The Queen Roshanara is sad and weeps in the absence of her lord in battle. Her maidens strive to comfort her:

With this, to the couch

Whereon lay the Queen, so shaken

With voices she heard

And dreams she dreamt

And visions she saw.

To her they brought rose-petals

In their hands, and musks in baskets,

Perfuming her. But she was

Terror-stricken still.

Then with a wild clash of

Tambourines they fell to

An air of joyous happiness,

Sweetly soared the voice,

Like that of a nightingale,

Of the chief maiden who

Sang of the wind:

“North wind and south wind,

West wind and east wind,

Thou shalt not moan,

But blow, blow

Gently on my Lady’s cheeks, blow.

And thou, O great sea,

Thou shalt not wail,

But sweetly lull my Lady to sleep.

“Red leaf and green leaf, and all ye withered leaves,

Ye shall not turn the lawns into a wilderness,

For my Lady is sad,

And to see ye thus would make her sadder still.

Great trees and small trees,

Ye shall not shake and shiver

When my Lady walks,

But ye shall serve her as a good shade.

“Great birds and small birds and all ye humming birds,

Ye shall not wail mourning elegies,

But shall twitter and your little throats shall quiver

In an ecstasy of delight.

Ye shall sing of sweet joy,

Ye shall make my Lady happy.

“And ye Fairies and Cherubs,

Ye Queens of the Dreams,

And Kings of the Shadows,

Of the hidden people and the Unknown,

Ye shall not approach my Lady,

For her heart sinks with fright,

And she trembles like a leaf

That is thrown from the branches

With the wind’s force.

All ye unknown, be banished

From my Lady, to your land

Of Mystery and Heart’s Desire,

To your land of Eternal Youth.”

Adi K. Sett.

IN PRAISE OF HENNA

A kokila called from a henna-spray:

Lira! liree! Lira! liree!

Hasten, maidens, hasten away

To gather the leaves of the henna tree.

Send your pitchers afloat on the tide,

Gather the leaves ere the dawn be old,

Grind them in mortars of amber and gold,

The fresh green leaves of the henna tree.

A kokila called from a henna-spray:

Lira! liree! Lira! liree!

Hasten, maidens, hasten away

To gather the leaves of the henna tree.

The tilka’s red for the brow of a bride,

And betel-nut’s red for lips that are sweet;

But, for lily-like fingers and feet,

The red, the red of the henna tree.

Sarojini Naidu.

IMPERIAL DELHI

Imperial City! dowered with sovereign grace,

To thy renascent glory still there clings

The splendid tragedy of ancient things,

The regal woes of many a vanquished race;

And memory’s tears are cold upon thy face

E’en while thy heart’s returning gladness rings

Loud on the sleep of thy forgotten Kings,

Who in thine arms sought Life’s last resting-place.

Thy changing Kings and Kingdoms pass away,

The gorgeous legends of a bygone day,

But thou dost still immutably remain

Unbroken symbol of proud histories,

Unageing priestess of old mysteries

Before whose shrine the spells of Death are vain.

Sarojini Naidu.

DIRGE

(In sorrow of her bereavement)

What longer need hath she of loveliness,

Whom Death has parted from her lord’s caress?

Of glimmering robes like rainbow-tangled mist,

Of gleaming glass or jewels on her wrist,

Blossoms or fillet-pearls to deck her head,

Or jasmine garlands to adorn her bed?

Put by the mirror of her bridal days....

Why needs she now its counsel or its praise,

Or happy symbol of the henna leaf

For hands that know the comradeship of grief,

Red spices for her lips that drink of sighs,

Or black collyrium for her weeping eyes?

Shatter her shining bracelets, break the string

Threading the mystic marriage-beads that cling

Loth to desert a sobbing throat so sweet,

Unbind the golden anklets on her feet,

Divest her of her azure veils and cloud

Her living beauty in a living shroud.

Nay, let her be! ... what comfort can we give

For joy so frail, for hope so fugitive?

The yearning pain of unfulfilled delight,

The moonless vigils of her lonely night,

For the abysmal anguish of her tears,

And flowering springs that mock her empty years?

Sarojini Naidu.

SPRING

Young leaves grow green on the banyan twigs,

And red on the peepul tree,

The honey-birds pipe to the budding figs,

And honey-blooms call to the bee.

Poppies squander their fragile gold

In the silvery aloe-brake;

Coral and ivory lilies unfold

Their delicate lives on the lake.

Kingfishers ruffle the feathery sedge,

And all the vivid air thrills

With butterfly-wings in the wild-rose hedge,

And the luminous blue of the hills.

Sarojini Naidu.

CRADLE-SONG

From groves of spice,

O’er fields of rice,

Athwart the lotus-stream,

I bring for you,

Aglint with dew,

A little lovely dream.

Sweet, shut your eyes,

The wild fire-flies

Dance through the fairy neem;

From the poppy-hole

For you I stole

A little lovely dream.

Dear eyes, good-night,

In golden light

The stars around you gleam;

On you I press

With soft caress

A little lovely dream.

Sarojini Naidu.

JUNE SUNSET

Here shall my heart find its haven of calm,

By rush-fringed rivers and rain-fed streams

That glimmer thro’ meadows of lily and palm.

Here shall my soul find its true repose

Under a sunset sky of dreams

Diaphanous, amber, and rose.

The air is aglow with the glint and whirl

Of swift wild wings in their homeward flight,

Sapphire, emerald, topaz, and pearl,

Afloat in the evening light.

A brown quail cries from the tamarisk bushes,

A bulbul calls from the cassia-plume,

And thro’ the wet earth the gentian pushes

Her spikes of silvery bloom.

Where’er the foot of the bright shower passes

Fragrant and fresh delights unfold;

The wild fawns feed on the scented grasses,

Wild bees on the cactus-gold.

An ox-cart stumbles upon the rocks,

And a wistful music pursues the breeze,

From a shepherd’s pipe as he gathers his flocks

Under the pipal-trees.

And a young Banjara driving her cattle

Lifts up her voice as she glitters by

In an ancient ballad of love and battle

Set to the beat of a mystic tune,

And the faint stars gleam in the eastern sky

To herald a rising moon.

Sarojini Naidu.

BUNKIM CHANDRA CHATTERJI

How hast thou lost, O month of honey and flowers,

The voice that was thy soul! Creative showers,

The cuckoo’s daylong cry and moan of bees,

Zephyrs and streams and tender-blossoming trees,

And murmuring laughter and heart-easing tears

And tender thoughts and great, and the compeers

Of lily and jasmine and melodious birds,

All these thy children into lovely words

He changed at will and made soul-moving books

From hearts of men and women’s honeyed looks.

O master of delicious words! the bloom

Of champak and the breath of king-perfume

Have made each musical sentence with the noise

Of women’s ornaments and sweet household joys

And laughter tender as the voice of leaves

Playing with vernal winds. The eye receives,

That reads these lines, an image of delight,

A world with shapes of spring and summer, noon and night;

All nature in a page, no pleasing show

But men more real than the friends we know.

O plains, O hills, O rivers of sweet Bengal,

O land of love and flowers, the spring-bird’s call

And southern wind are sweet among your trees:

Your poet’s words are sweeter far than these.

Your heart was this man’s heart. Subtly he knew

The beauty and divinity in you.

His nature kingly was and as a god

In large serenity and light he trod

His daily way, yet beauty, like soft flowers

Wreathing a hero’s sword, ruled all his hours.

Thus moving in these iron times and drear,

Barren of bliss and robbed of golden cheer,

He sowed the desert with ruddy-hearted rose,

The sweetest voice that ever spoke in prose.

Sri Aurobindo Ghose.

A ROSE OF WOMEN

Now lilies blow upon the windy height,

Now flowers the pansy kissed by tender rain,

Narcissus builds his house of self-delight

And Love’s own fairest flower blooms again;

Vainly your gems, O meadows, you recall;

One simple girl breathes sweeter than you all.

Sri Aurobindo Ghose.

(Meleager.)

THE ISLAND GRAVE

Ocean is there, and evening; the slow moan

Of the blue waves that like a shaken robe

Two heard together once, one hears alone.

Now gliding white and hushed towards our globe

Keen January with cold eyes and clear

And snowdrops pendent in each frosty lobe

Ushers the firstborn of the radiant year.

Haply his feet, that grind the breaking mould,

May brush the dead grass on thy secret bier;

Haply his joyless fingers wan and cold

Caress the ruined masses of thy hair,

Pale child of winter, dead ere youth was old.

Art thou so desolate in that bitter air

That even his breath feels warm upon thy face?

Ah! till the daffodil is born, forbear,

And I will meet thee in that lonely place,

Then the grey dawn shall end my hateful days

And death admit me to the silent ways.

Sri Aurobindo Ghose.

INVITATION

With wind and the weather beating round me

Up to the hill and the moorland I go.

Who will come with me? Who will climb with me?

Wade through the brook and tramp through the snow?

Not in the petty circle of cities

Cramped by your doors and your walls I dwell;

Over me God is blue in the welkin,

Against me the wind and the storm rebel.

I sport with solitude here in my regions,

Of misadventure have made me a friend.

Who would live largely? who would live freely?

Here to the wind-swept uplands ascend.

I am the lord of tempest and mountain,

I am the Spirit of freedom and pride.

Stark must he be and a kinsman to danger

Who shares my kingdom and walks at my side.

Sri Aurobindo Ghose.

A CHILD’S IMAGINATION

O thou golden image,

Miniature of bliss,

Speaking sweetly, speaking meetly!

Every word deserves a kiss.

Strange, remote, and splendid

Childhood’s fancy pure

Thrills to thoughts we cannot fathom,

Quick felicities obscure.

When the eyes grow solemn

Laughter fades away,

Nature of her mighty childhood

Recollects the Titan play;

Woodlands touched by sunlight

Where the elves abode,

Giant meetings, Titan greetings,

Fancies of a youthful God.

These are coming on thee

In thy secret thought;

God remembers in thy bosom

All the wonders that He wrought.

Sri Aurobindo Ghose.

EVENING

A golden evening, when the thoughtful sun

Rejects its usual pomp in going, trees

That bend down to their green companion

And fruitful mother, vaguely whispering—these

And a wide silent sea. Such hour is nearest God,

Like rich old age when the long ways have all been trod.

Sri Aurobindo Ghose.

THE SEA AT NIGHT

The grey sea creeps half-visible, half-hushed,

And grasps with its innumerable hands

These silent walls. I see beyond a rough

Glimmering infinity, I feel the wash

And hear the sibilation of the waves

That whisper to each other as they push

To shoreward side by side—long lines and dim

Of movement flecked with quivering spots of foam,

The quiet welter of a shifting world.

Sri Aurobindo Ghose.

LACHHI

From a well-known Panjābī folk-song

Aha! When Lachhi spills water,

Spills water, spills water, spills water,

There sandal grows—where Lachhi spills water.

Aha! Lachhi asks the girls,

The girls, the girls, the girls,

Oh, what coloured veil suits a fair complexion?

Aha! The girls said truly,

Said truly, said truly, said truly,

A veil that is black becomes a fair complexion.

What then your fortune, Lachhi?

Your fortune, Lachhi, your fortune, Lachhi, your fortune, Lachhi?

Ho! your boy like the moon, what then your fortune?

Who’ll give you milk to drink, Lachhi?

Drink Lachhi, drink Lachhi, drink Lachhi?

Your friendship with the goatherds is sundered!

Who’ll give you milk to drink?

[This song is sung to a purely folk-air, not in any definite rāg.]

AZMĒ

Note.—The story goes that Gāmī wrote the song about a girl of Kutahār (a village in the Maraz pargana of Kāshmīr) named Azmē, and that it became the occasion of trouble for its author. Complaints were made about Gāmī, and his father reported the matter to the Tahsildār of the district; but the poet explained that Azmē meant “to-day” and that the whole song had only a Sufī significance.

Azmē, love of thee came to me, fortunate vision!

Azmē, show me thy face, O darling.

Azmē, love of thee, etc.

Say where shall I wait, in Shāngas or Naugām?

An ill name I got in Kutahār!

Azmē, love of thee, etc.

I sought thee in Achhaval, Brang, Kutahār—

Lakhs of hardships I suffered, my darling.

Pomegranate thy cheeks, or saza-posh—

How dark are thine eyes, my darling!

Shining thy brows as though with sweat—

How many a one thy nose has slain, my darling!

Sitting by the door, choosing saffron flowers,

I know not for whom, my darling!

What a famous spinning-wheel is there in Kolgām,

Matchless its handle, my darling!

Silver are the strings of thy spinning-wheel,

Those who see it fall ill with wonder, my darling!

Skilfully pounding the rice so fine,

The good shape of the cypress has Azmē, my darling!

Bright is her dress as a pearl,

Short are the plaits of Azmē, my darling!

Slowly combing her hair so fine—

I will count up thy plaits, my darling!

Kāmader has passed through Kutahār,

All folk to him must yield (?), my darling!

Hapless Māhmud, where shall he wait for thee?

An ill name I won in Kutahār, my darling!

Māhmud Gāmī.

AWAKE, MY FRIEND

Awake, my friend!

Be glad, spring has come!

Spread jasmine on the balconies,

Lasting is the glory of jasmine!

From afar I saw the Beloved come hither,

That Hourī came to my courtyard!

Breast to breast he embraced me before the people,

Openly was his coming to be seen by any!

Ah, burn my blood to clots of fondness,

Accomplish (in my heart) the love of Islam!

These things thou shouldst not reveal among drunkards,

Lest to-morrow there be reproach!

Māhmud Vāzah will tell the secret of Love,

Hans Rāja shall he be named!

Māhmud Vāzah.

MARRIAGE SONG

Spring has come, with almond blossom,

All about Shārikā Dēvī!

Flower-beds are walled about—

Flowers I’ll offer, night and morn!

Spring has come, with almond blossom,

All about Rāginyā Dēvī!

Lotus flowers are walled about—

Milk I’ll pour her, night and morn!

Spring has come, with almond blossom,

All about Zālā Dēvī!

Mint-plants are walled about—

Pūjā I’ll make, night and morn!

Spring has come, with almond blossom,

All about Shivajī!

Sandal trees are walled about—

I will anoint Him night and morn!

Spring has come, with almond blossom,

All about Nārāyan!

Tulsi plants are walled about—

Saffron I’ll rub night and morn!

Ananda Coomaraswamy.

Note.—By the names Shārikā, Rāginyā, etc., are meant places as well as the divinities worshipped. Thus Shārikā (Satī, Pārvatī) is Hari Parbat, where there is a festival to Shārikā in March; Rāginyā (Kīr Bavānī) is an island at Inlamul, where there is a festival in May; Zālā (another form of Pārvatī) is a hill where there is a festival in June; Shivajī is a village in the Zainager pargana; Nārāyan is a tīrtha near Bāramuta.

MYSTIC LOVE SONG FROM “THIRTY INDIAN SONGS”

Quietly come, O Beauty, come!

O! cups of wine I’ll fill for thee.

Come to our house, O Beauty, come;

Come as a guest, O Beauty, come:

Quietly come, O Beauty, come!

Borders twain thy veil adorn;

At early dawn, O Beauty, rise—

Quietly come, O Beauty, come!

A silken border thy veil adorns;

Father has sent thee a cradle of bells—

Quietly come, O Beauty, come!

Hast thou come from the heavens, O lovely bird?

Wilt come by thyself, or a snare shall I spread?

Quietly come, O Beauty, come!

He who made this golden bracelet,

Was he only a goldsmith and never a master of craft?

Quietly come, O Beauty, come!

Ananda Coomaraswamy.

THE PUNJAB AUTUMN: THE SEASON OF THE COOLING DEW

(Composed on the birthday of Guru Nanak, 1916)

I

The piping of the rain-birds has ceased,

Dadar and peepiya are silent now,

The dance of the peacock is over,

It is the season of the cooling dew!

The dew is falling everywhere,

And wet is every rose.

The gentle breath of heaven blows.

II

The clouds have stopped their thunder,

The lightning has hidden her spark,

The floods of the Punjab rivers have rolled away,

The rivers have shrunk low;

The storm is over, and the winds blow soft and slow.

It is the season of the cooling dew!

The dew is falling everywhere,

And wet is every rose.

The gentle breath of heaven blows.

III

The sweet, sweet dew wets all with joy,

Wet with joy are the night and the moon,

And dewdrops quiver over the stars on high,

And joy-wet blows the wind on my face.

It is the season of the cooling dew!

The dew is falling everywhere,

And wet is every rose.

The gentle breath of heaven blows.

IV

The cool, soft touches of the falling dew calm my soul;

And my mind, blessed with the dew-joys calm and cool, is at rest!

My beloved! come to me as the dew of my eyes!

Come to-day as the dew cometh!

And cool my soul parched by the pain of long, long separation!

My beloved! it is the season of the cooling dew!

The dew is falling everywhere,

And wet is every rose.

The gentle breath of heaven blows.

V

O master of the order of the Seli![18]

O dweller of heaven!

O great giver!

My Guru Nanak! Come to me to-day!

O light of lights!

Thy seats are the sun and the moon!

My beloved! return to me to-day!

It is the season of the cooling dew!

The dew is falling everywhere,

And wet is every rose.

The gentle breath of heaven blows.

VI

It is the season of slumber and dew.

Cruel is all separation!

Pray remove the distances that divide me from thee.

My beloved! it is the season of the cooling dew!

The dew is falling everywhere,

And wet is every rose.

The gentle breath of heaven blows.

VII

My love! stay no more in distant lands away from me!

Come into the vacant courtyard of my heart!

Dye my soul with the joys of thy presence,

And make it now thy home.

Stay at home! Go no more out of me!

Dwell in my soul, before my eyes!

And for ever be there the perennial draught of my eyes.

My love! it is the season of the cooling dew!

The dew is falling everywhere,

And wet is every rose.

The gentle breath of heaven blows.

VIII

Fill my tearful gaze for ever with thy celestial face;

And let my eyes be for ever wet with the joy of seeing thee!

My love! dwell for ever in my eyes!

It is the season of the cooling dew!

The dew is falling everywhere,

And wet is every rose.

The gentle breath of heaven blows.

IX

It is now the dewy season,

The season of the happy meetings of love,

The season of the quenching of all fires of pain.

To me everything seems to be dew-wet;

From the blue of heaven the dew is falling soft;

It is the dew of deep, deep unions;

And wonder and worship is in the eyes.

The separated ones shall meet!

It is the season of the cooling dew!

The dew is falling everywhere,

And wet is every rose.

The gentle breath of heaven blows.

X

Now is the time of everlasting embraces!

My beloved! come, meet me to-day!

Take me to thy bosom!

The dew is flooding things with joy.

My love! come to me!

It is the season of the cooling dew!

The dew is falling everywhere,

And wet is every rose.

The gentle breath of heaven blows.

XI

The dew cometh from heaven down!

It bringeth heavenly peace for all,

It wetteth all with sweetness.

Invisible, it raineth deep into souls,

It raineth love and peace and joy.

It raineth sweetness.

Dew! dew! my comrades!

It is the season of the cooling dew!

The dew is falling everywhere,

And wet is every rose.

The gentle breath of heaven blows.

(Trans.) Puran Singh

(Nārgās: Bhai Vir Singh).

RÂJHANS (THE PRINCE OF SWANS)

Râjhans! The Golden Swan! Is it thy plumage that shines, or the sunrise on the eternal snows?

The dweller of Mân-Sarôwar, the lake on the roof of the world! Thy golden beak parts milk from water, in the living stream thou art a liberated soul!

A rosary of spotless pearls is in thy beak, and how sublime is the lofty curve of thy neck against the Heaven’s vast azure!

Thou livest on pearls, the nectar drops so pure of Hari Nam.

Great Soul! lover of the azure transparent Infinite! Thou canst not breathe out of the Mân-Sarôwar air, nor canst thou live out of sight of those loftiest peaks of snow, and away from the diluted perfume of musk blowing from the wild trail of the deer!

Thou art the spirit of Beauty, thou art far beyond the reach of human thought. Thy isolation reflecteth the glory of the starry sky in thy Nectar Lake of Heart in whose waters the sun daily dips himself!

Thou hast the limitless expanse of air, the companionship of fragrant gods,

And yet we know thou leavest those Fair Abodes to come to share the woes of human love;

Thou alightest unawares on the grain-filled barn of the humble farmer, awakening Nature’s maiden hearts, thou informest love.

It is thy delight to see woman love man, the small ripplings of a human heart in love flutter thee in thy lofty seat.

Thou art the soul liberated through love; thou knowest the worth of love, flying for its sake even midst the cities’ smoke and dust, perchance, to save a human soul through love!

“Sisters of the Spinning-Wheel”:

Puran Singh.

LATER LYRICS: POPLAR, BEECH, AND WEEPING WILLOW

I

Shapely poplar, shivering white, poplar like a maiden,

Thinking, musing softly here, so light and so unladen,

That with every breath and stir, perpetually you gladden,

Teach me your still secrecies of thought that never sadden.

From the heavy-hearted earth, earth of grief and passion,

Maiden, would you spring with me, and leave men’s lowly fashion,

Skyward lift with me your thoughts in cumberless elation,

Every leaf and every shoot a virgin aspiration.

The blue day, the floating clouds, the stars shall you for palace

Proffer their cathedral pomp, dawn her rosy chalice.

Where the birds are, you shall throng and revel to be lonely

In the blue of heaven to spire and sway with breezes only.

II

Beech, of leafy isles the queen, beech, of trees the lady,

Soaring to a tower of sighs, in branches soft and shady,

You that sunward lift your strength, to make of shadow duty,

Teach me, tree, your heavenly height, and earth-remembering beauty.

Maiden, would you soar like me, with day-upclouding tresses,

Beauty into bounty change, bend down the eye that blesses;

Make from heaven a shelter cool, to shepherd and sheep silly

Shadowing with shadiness, hot rose and fainting lily.

Through your glorious heart of gloom, the noonday wind awaking

In an ecstasy shall set swaying, blowing, shaking;

Leafy branches, in their nests set the sweet birds rocking

Till their happy song break out, the noonday ardour mocking.

Willow sweet, willow sad, willow by the river,

Taught by pensive love to droop, where ceaseless waters shiver,

Teach me, steadfast sorrower, your mournful grace of graces;

Weeping to make beautiful the silent water-places.

Maiden, would you learn of me the loveliness of mourning,

Droop into the chill, wan wave, strength, hardness, lofty scorning;

Drench your drooping soul in tears, content to love and languish,

Gaze in sorrow’s looking-glass, and see the face of anguish?

In the very wash of woe, as your bowed soul shall linger,

You shall touch the sheer, bright stars, and on the moon set finger;

You shall hear, where brooks have birth, the mountain-pine’s emotion,

Catch upon the broadening stream the sound and swell of ocean.

Manmohan Ghose.

ORPHIC MYSTERIES: THE YELLOW BUTTERFLY

Of all shy visitants, I love

That darling butterfly,

Whose wings are to the cornfield’s wave

A hovering reply.

Yellow as dancing wheat-ears ripe

He suns with his gay youth,

And feeds me with the gold of light,

The thrice-tried gleam of truth.

When, glooming back upon myself,

The garden path I pace,

He comes and makes my gladdened eyes

The dial to his grace.

Unfailing omen, punctual sign!

No sooner am I out,

He hovers by on golden wings

To chase the grey of doubt.

All melancholy thoughts to thresh,

Winnow the blissful grain

Of immortality, and sift

From mortal fear and pain.

Day after day the marvel grows;

Ever his gladsome morn

Shines down the blackness of my grief

With glancing wings of scorn.

Now from the creeper’s bowery height,

Now o’er the garden wall;

From far-off places, or where first

The wonder did befall.

In that low bed of coxcomb flowers

Beneath her window-sill,

Her chamber-window, where he warms

Homeward my spirit still;

Or plumb-down from the soaring roof

He to my awful eye

His radiant message angels me

From azure depths of sky.

I cannot with ungrateful heart

Feel God’s fair world a blank.

Straight for the sunny thought of her

His yellow wings I thank.

I cannot still, her sight to want,

Weep like a thwarted boy,

Cry outright, but with darting gold

He chides me back to joy.

The stupor of the miracle

Ever renewed, the fear,

I lose in charmed tranquillity,

For she, my saint, is here.

Who works it? No dead relic sweet

Of her, my living saint,

Perfect beyond the skill of thought

Of fancy’s power to paint.

Whole from her suffering martyrdom

She is arisen. No tomb

Could hold her, no far blissful heaven

Allure. Her heaven is home.

No place more holy than these walks,

This garden, where the flowers

Swing censers breathing up to God,

This house a Book of Hours.

No room but memory’s sacred hand,

Gilded, illuminate,

Paints how she suffered, loved and died—

The legend of her fate.

In heaven she is; beatitude

To her; her loved ones still,

So loving she, here, here, enskyed

To guard. It is God’s will.

Here in the old sweet home where, still

A guardian spirit, she

Heals, comforts, counsels, and performs

Her angel ministry.

Manmohan Ghose.

MYVANWY

Oft hast thou heard it, that old true saying,

’Tis like and unlike makes the happiest music.

Then, gravely smiling, scorn me not, Myvanwy,

Fairest of maidens.

Thou who in sunlight sittest, pensive leaning

At the open window, thy hand deep-buried

In dark sweet clusters of thy hair, and gazest

O’er the wide ocean.

Yes, o’er the ocean far, far in the distance,

Is my own country, and other soil bore me

Than thy dear birthplace, other sun than England’s

Nourished my spirit.

Yet for this slight not my heart as alien:

What can green England show to match those regions

Save thyself only, what hath she that merits

Prouder remembrance?

Nothing! nor any shore that hears the Ocean,

Nothing can match their beauty! If Myvanwy

Had but an exile’s sad heart in her bosom,

She too would say so.

She too would say so, and back in thought returning,

How would her sweet eyes fill with tears of gladness,

How would she marvel, the lovely maiden,

Breathless with gazing!

There, stretching lonely, do the giant mountains

Rise with their ages of snows to heaven,

Snows, the heart shudders, so far away seem they,

Fearfully lovely:

There is the tall palm, like her own dear stature,

The land’s green lady, and riotously hang there,

All for Myvanwy’s lips, the strange, delicious

Fruits of the tropics;

And the vast elephant that dreams for ages,

Lost among dim leaves and things of old, remembers:

Would he not, rousing at her name’s sweet rumour,

Pace to behold her?

Oh me! what glories would her eyes enkindle,

Eyes with their quick imaginative rapture!

How shall I picture to her all the strangeness,

All the enchantment,

In that enchanted land of noon? My heart faints

And my tongue falters: for long ago, Myvanwy,

Deep in the east where now but evening gathers,

Lost is my country.

Long ago hither in passionate boyhood,

Lightly an exile, lightly leagues I wandered

Over the bitter foam: so far Fate led me

Only to love thee.

Lost is that country, and all but forgotten

’Mid these chill breezes, yet still, oh, believe me,

All her meridian suns and ardent summers

Burn in my bosom.

Manmohan Ghose.

KISMET

Before our births, Kussam, who makes our fate,

Ordained us happy or unfortunate,

And wrote upon our brow and on our hands

The signs that tell to him who understands

Our Destiny, decreed for good or ill.

So pass the Wise, bending to Allah’s will,

Their lives into His mighty hands resigned.

One child is cherished; one to hands unkind

Is given; one dies in life’s first shining dawn;

One longs to die, but Death when called upon

Turns from the supplicating voice his ear;

One starves in poverty; one is Amir

And drives his elephant in lordly state;

One lives in love; one girdled round with hate

Dwells ever in a bitter world of strife;

One in the moment of this earthly life

Is ruler, sitting on a regal seat;

One crawls a slave, obedient at his feet.

And Allah changes all as He desires,

He is an artist whom His art inspires:

This world the picture He is painting still.

But with his share of fate He gave man will

To fashion circumstance by its control,

To make a path of healing for his soul,

To act, to think, to feel aright until

He knows his will as one with Allah’s will.

Inayat Khan.

TANSEN

Tansen, the singer, in great Akbar’s Court

Won great renown; through the Badshahi Fort

His voice rang like the sound of silver bells

And Akbar ravished heard. The story tells

How the King praised him, gave him many a gem,

Called him chief jewel in his diadem.

One day the singer sang the Song of Fire,

The Deepak Râg, and burning like a pyre

His body burst into consuming flame.

To cure his burning heart a maiden came

And sang Malhar, the song of water cold,

Till health returned, and comfort as of old.

“Mighty thy Teacher must be and divine,”

Great Akbar said; “magic indeed is thine,

Learnt at his feet.” Then happy Tansen bowed

And said, “Beyond the world’s ignoble crowd,

Scorning its wealth, remote and far-away

He dwells within a cave of Himalay.”

“Could I but see him once,” desired the King,

“Sit at his feet awhile, and listening

Hear his celestial song, I would deny

My state and walk in robes of poverty.”

Then said Tansen, “As you desire, Huzoor,

Indeed ’twere better as a slave and poor

To come; for he, lifted above the things

Of earth, disdains to sing to earthly kings.”

Long was the road, and Akbar as a slave

Followed Tansen who rode towards the cave

High in the mountains. At the singer’s feet

They knelt and prayed with supplication sweet:

“Towards thy shrine, lo, we have journeyed long,

O Holy Master, bless us with thy song!”

Then Ostad, won by their humility,

Sang songs of peace and high felicity;

The Malkous Raga all ecstatic rang

Till birds and beasts, enchanted as he sang,

Gathered to hear. O’er Akbar’s dreaming soul

He felt the waves of heavenly rapture roll,

But, as he turned to speak his words of praise,

Ostad had vanished from his wondering gaze.

“Tell me, Tansen, what theme this is that holds

The soul enchanted, and the heart enfolds

In high delight”; and, when he knew the name,

“Tell me,” again he said, “could you the same

Theme sing to lure my heart to paths untrod?”

“Ah no, to thee I sing; he sings to God.”

Inayat Khan.

The high ambition of the drop of rain

Is to be merged in the unfettered sea;

My sorrow when it passed all bounds of pain,

Changing, became itself the remedy.

Behold how great is my humility!

Under your cruel yoke I suffered sore;

Now I no longer feel thy tyranny,

I hunger for the pain that then I bore.

Why did the fragrance of the flowers outflow

If not to breathe with benediction sweet

Across her path? Why did the soft wind blow

If not to kiss the ground before her feet?

Ghalib.

How difficult is the thorny way of strife

That man hath stumbled in since time began!

And in the tangled business of this life

How difficult to play the part of man!

When she decrees there should exist no more

My humble cottage, through its broken walls,

And cruelly drifting in the open door,

The frozen rain of desolation falls.

O mad Desire, why dost thou flame and burn

And bear my soul further and further yet

To the Belovéd? Then, why dost thou turn

To bitter disappointment and regret?

Such light there gleams from the Belovéd’s face

That every eye becomes her worshipper,

And every mirror, looking on her grace,

Desires to be the frame enclosing her.

Unhappy lovers, slaves of cruel chance,

In this grim place of slaughter strange indeed

Your joy to see unveiled her haughty glance

That flashes like the scimitar of Ede.

When I had hardly drawn my latest breath,

Pardon she asked for killing me. Alas!

How soon repentance followed on my death,

How quick her unavailing sorrow was!

Ghalib.

Thy beauty flashes like a sword

Serene and keen and merciless;

But great as is thy cruelty,

Even greater is thy loveliness.

It is the gift of God to thee,

This beauty rare and exquisite;

Why dost thou hide it thus from me?

I shall not steal nor sully it.

And as thy beauty shines, in Heaven

There climbs upon its path of fire

The star that lights my rival’s way,

And with it mounts his heart’s desire.

Even in thy house is jealousy,

Thy youth demands the lover’s praise

Over thy beauty, which itself

Is jealous of thy gracious ways.

I died with joy when winningly

I heard the Well-Beloved call—

Zahir, where is my beauty gone?

Thou must have robbed me after all.

Zahir.

I shall not try to flee the sword of Death,

Nor, fearing it, a watchful vigil keep;

It will be nothing but a sigh, a breath,

A turning on the other side to sleep.

Through all the close entanglements of earth

My spirit shaking off its bonds shall fare

And pass, and rise in new unfettered birth,

Escaping from this labyrinth of care.

Within the mortal caravanserai

No rest and no abiding place I know;

I linger here for but a fleeting day,

And at the morrow’s summoning I go.

What are these bonds that try to shackle me?

Through all their intricate chains my way I find;

I travel like a wandering melody

That floats untamed, untaken, on the wind.

From an unsympathetic world I flee

To you, your love and fellowship I crave,

O Singers dead, Sauda and Mushafi,

I lay my song as tribute on your grave.

Amir.

VOICE IN THE AIR

The vaulted roof opens. The guests feel that a Being is entering from above. They see nothing, but all hear a voice in the air.

High above the clouds in the Home of Light I

dwell.

My days are passed in the peace of Great Understanding.

For their welfare do I visit men in all corners of

the earth.

At the command of the Mother I move, up and

down, East and West, showering the rays of

Freedom upon all;

The Mother is the Circle, I am but a curve;

The Mother is the Whole, I am but a part;

The Mother is the Opening Lotus, I am but a

single petal;

The Mother is the Ocean of Honey, I am but a

thirsty bee.

Men call me Lord of the Sky and Father of the

Heavens. They know naught who speak

thus.

I am the Space and its all-infilling Light and the

sight in Man’s eyes which sees them both;

I am the Sense whereby Man knows the Quarters;

I dwell in peace, encompassing all these living

orbs of light;

I know the secret of the Primal Song; the gods

are all the offspring of a Song, by them unheard;

I keep the record of men’s thoughts in my infinite

House of Sky;

From æon to æon I hold up the Mirror of Thought

to each man’s mind, to lead him across the

shoreless Sea of Mirage;

Yet I do but the bidding of the Mother of Eternal

Power;

I am in all hearts, save only those where Love is

not.

The Being rises up through the open roof, and the guests hear his voice dying away in the far-off sky. The vault of the Hall closes. The southern door opens. A Being enters. They hear his voice.

VOICE IN THE AIR:

By the will of the Mother I am the Lord of the

Air;

I reign over all who breathe;

I carry sweet fragrance from ocean to ocean;

My song is heard in the mountain forest, but

men hear not my music in the clouds;

My home is near to the Lord of the Heart;

I am the Lord of Life’s Brother and Playmate;

I walk with Man from the door of Birth to the

door of Death; waking and sleeping, by day

and by night, I watch over him;

I sweep from Pole to Pole and none can withstand

my power;

I am the Friend of the Flowers—from one to

another I bear sweet messages of love;

This all I do at the command of the Mother of

Life.

There stands the Mother tenderly smiling, filling

with sweetness the Quarters of the Heavens.

Yea, like a spreading mountain pine She

stands in the soft autumn twilight, and it

pleases Her that I play upon my reed for

the comfort of all creatures that breathe.

The light dies out, leaving the Hall in darkness. After a while a kind of murky earth-light diffuses itself over the lower part of the Hall. The guests hear the sound of a mighty crying, like the wailing of a sacked city in the far distance. A voice, broken by sighs and groans, speaks from below.

VOICE:

I come. Ye ask, “Who art thou?” Gods have

not named me. I call myself “Humanity”;

I dwell on land and in the seas; I sweep through

the air and the ether.

I am man and woman and the intermediate one;

I am the ape and the tiger and the lamb.

I wander in the woods of dark continents as the

savage cannibal; I watch by the bedside

of the sick in the home of mercy.

I am ferocity in the beast of prey; I am compassion

in the heart of the mother.

I devour my own offspring; I sacrifice myself to

save others.

I change—every moment, every season, every

æon;

I fill the pages of my history with romances

written in blood;

Out of my dreams of heaven I create this earth;

I wax strong and wage war to please Death;

I laugh at Death and hurl him into the flaming

furnace of hell—and this I do to please my

children.

I enter the portals of Life with strong crying—and

with a sigh I bid farewell to Life.

I am prophet; I am idiot;

I am king and shepherd and fisherman.

I put my foot on the neck of kings and shepherds

and fishermen and turn them into dust;

And with their dust do I besmear myself and

madly dance over green meadows.

I am—what ye fear to think of me; I will be—what

ye love to dream of me.

But I will baffle all your fond expectations and

all your clever calculations;

In a moment of infinite time I will take the whole

world by the hand and lift it up to the heaven

of my heart.

I am the most erring of the High Mother’s children,

but one sure instinct I possess—I stand erect

the moment I fall, and by the aid of the very

obstacle that caused my fall do I rise again.

I sorrow not over my shortcomings and my

sufferings;

I hope—yet know that my hopes are too wild to

be realised.

In a part of Space called the Corner of Pain I

have made my home;

I breathe the atmosphere of pain—I drink from

the well of pain—I eat the fruits of the tree

of pain—my sleep is troubled by the dream

of pain.

I love not Pain—Pain loves me;

The whole history of my existence is a constant

fleeing from this cruel lover of mine;

I have prayed to God to be delivered from him—has

He heard my prayer?

I have worshipped a million lesser divinities—nature-gods,

man-gods, god-gods—throughout

the ages, hoping to be relieved of pain—have

they saved me?

I have believed in prophets, saviours, saints—have

they healed me?

I have listened to philosophers, scientists,

magicians—have they protected me?

Kings, statesmen, law-givers have boldly proclaimed

the gospel of peace and security—have

they not themselves plunged the

poisoned dagger into my heart?

I am old as Eternity—yet I feel not the burden

of eternal years;

I am young as the babe of to-day—yet I am wise

as all the hoary Bible-makers of all the races

of the earth.

I am one—I am many; I am spirit, ghost, man,

animal, and tree: yet my hidden life flows

ever with passionate impetuosity towards

the distant future above the heads of

nations.

To me the least is not less than the greatest; in

all I am their sensitiveness to pain—the pain

of a perpetual new birth of cosmos or of

chaos.

I am large, and my largeness moves me to face

great pain for the avoiding of great pain;

I am strong, and my strength lies in discovering

the source of consolation even in the moment

of suffering from suffering itself;

I am inured to pain—so that I delight in excitement

that brings pain and inflicts pain.

Who brought this pain upon me? Had it been

God-given, God would one day have taken

it away; has He taken it away?

Had it been the gift of Nature, I would have

revenged myself upon her; but I feel no

enmity to Nature—I desire that she be

endless, infinite, that I may ever conquer

her;

I desire to be charmed by her—yet to be her

master; I wonder, shall I ever wish to end

this play?

Deeming myself the mother of my pain, I seek

the aid of floods and earthquakes, war and

pestilence and famine, to bring destruction

on myself; but ever by a mysterious magic

I rise from my own ashes and live again;

and after my resurrection, sitting in the

dawn-light by the waveless ocean, Psyche

comes and whispers to my heart: “Not

thou, O sweet Humanity, art cause of thine

own pain!”

And I muse: If I be the father of my sufferings,

how can I desire to live again? How can I

inflict pain upon myself? How can I construct

machinery for my own torture?

I know that my nature is rooted in contradiction;

have I perhaps sought to grow at the cost

of happiness and peace?

Bright Powers in the heavens are watching over

my mysterious destiny. Have they lauded

me as good and true and beautiful? Have

they condemned me as bad and false and

ugly? Who will say whether I am developing

aright? Who will say whether the

daily use to which I am constrained to put

my life is not frustrating the Eternal Purpose?

I am left alone with my unforeseeing understanding

and my ever forward-springing

untamable energy.

My knowledge embraces not the whole reality.

Perchance my sensitiveness to pain has

sprung from my limited uncomprehending

understanding. True, in my own eyes I

grow from ugliness to beauty, from ignorance

to knowledge, from slavery to freedom, from

sin to holiness. I make progress in culture

and civilisation—but I rise to the zenith

only to descend to the nadir.

Henceforth I will seek new and inward space for

my progress. In the coming age I will

seek to bore a tunnel in the spirit, to find an

inner path to the Divinity of my Heart.

But I will not destroy the bridges which I

have built during the past ages, linking

this earth with the distant divinity of suns

and moons and stars.

I will be free, glorious, and immortal.

The Voice ceases.

Śrī Ānanda Āchārya.

All this is rhythm.

May-fields, child-hearts, evening skies,

Grow corn and wisdom and stars

By the throb of rhythm;

And Muses from the Milky Way

Nightly visit

The sleeping poet’s downy pillow

By the law of rhythm;

And angels bring him faces

Flushed with morning’s rose,

Tinted with even’s quiet,

By the sweet impulse of rhythm.

Wait, O soul!

Outside thy door, upon the green,

Heaven stands expectant,

Waiting to be ushered in

By Rhythm,

Just now—or perchance to-morrow.

Śrī Ānanda Āchārya.

From “Usarika.”

Friend, dwell thou

within my ruby-lotus heart of dreams;

Friend, see thyself

in the diamond mirror of my heart of hopes;

Friend, sport with me

in the garden-walks of my heart, fringed with everlastings;

Friend, sleep thou on the shore of the song-throated ocean of my heart;

Friend, shine in me

like sunlight in the heart of a rose-bud of jade.

Śrī Ānanda Āchārya.

From “Usarika.”

Thou art the rose,

I am the honey;

Thou drinkest the light

of the four heavens,

And my soul is suffused

with the rainbow of seven tints;

I give myself

to the bees

And become a song

on the wings of winds

that sing to the gods

and the fleecy clouds

and the sleeping children of Life.

Śrī Ānanda Āchārya.

From “Usarika” (Dawn-Rhythms).

Snow-blossoms,

snow-blossoms,

Are

you alive?

In your heart

I see

the image

of

the heavens,

the disc

of

the sun,

And

when clouds

veil

the face

of

the sky

I see

your facets

tinted

with

the ink

of

dark sorrow.

Children of Varun,

sweet guests

of

late Autumn,

you too

hear

the whispers

of

Immortality.

Like

our village sons,

dwelling

in

lighted cottages

by

the gloom-canopied

graves

of

their departed

ancestors.

Śrī Ānanda Āchārya.

From “Saki” (The Comrade).

The

rose of eternity

is

my heart,

the

sun-gold honey

is

my love

for

my Saki,

the

honey-bees

are

my sighs and songs,

the

river

is

my feeling

of

life,

and

the light

of

my Saki’s

eyes

is

the true life

of

the red rose.

What

grey dews

or

blind canker

can harm

this

ever-smiling

rose

of

my heart?

Śrī Ānanda Āchārya.

From “Saki.”

The blue

of

Indra

is

thy laughter

frozen

into

the

sky-ocean

and

these stars

and

this earth

are

frozen lilies

and

we

living creatures

are

frozen bees.

O Saki,

laugh

no

more.

Śrī Ānanda Āchārya.

From “Saki.”

The shadow

of

a

flying bird

across

the

sun’s disc

fell

on

the

still floor

of

my morning-quiet

cave

and

vanished—

Like

the memory

of

one

who

passing

through

the

bright shade

of

my garden trees

of

early days

entered

into

the

deep shadows

of

another’s

garden trees.

Śrī Ānanda Āchārya.

From “Saki.”

LOVE’S SAMĀDHI[19]

Ah, Love, I sink in the timeless sleep,

Sink in the timeless sleep;

One Image stands before my eyes,

And thrills my bosom’s deep:

One Vision bathes in radiant light

My spirit’s palace-halls;

All stir of hand, all throb of brain,

Quivers, and sinks, and falls.

My soul fares forth; no fetters now

Chain me to this world’s shore.

Sleep! I would sleep! In pity spare;

Let no man wake me more!

Nārāyan Vāman Tilak.

A CRADLE SONG

Hush thee, hush thee, baby Christ,

Lord of all mankind,—

Thou the happy lullaby

Of my mind.

Hush thee, hush thee, Jesus, Lord,

Stay of all that art,—

Thou the happy lullaby

Of my heart.

Hush thee, hush thee, home of peace,—

Lo! Love lying there!—

Thou the happy lullaby

Of my care.

Hush thee, hush thee, Soul of mine,

Setting all men free—

Thou the happy lullaby

Of the whole of me.

Nārāyan Vāman Tilak.

THE WAY OF POVERTY

Thou hadst no servants to attend on Thee;

Then why this pomp of household state for me?

Coarse fare and scanty was Thy portion, Lord;

Then why for me this richly-furnished board?

Thou hadst not where to lay Thy head to rest;

Then why should I of mansions be possessed?

Ah, hapless I! What is this tyranny?

How dost Thou laugh and make a mock of me!

Ah, take from me this burden that doth bow

My head! blest ocean of all love art Thou!

I speak in anger, Lord; yet, if Thou too

Reject my prayer, what can Thy servant do?

Saith Dāsa, Christ, upon Thy pallet-bed

Grant me a little space to lay my head.

Nārāyan Vāman Tilak.

THE LAST PRAYER

Lay me within Thy lap to rest;

Around my head Thine arm entwine;

Let me gaze up into Thy face,

O Father-Mother mine!

So let my spirit pass with joy,

Now at the last, O Tenderest!

Saith Dāsa, Grant Thy wayward child

This one, this last request.

Nārāyan Vāman Tilak.

UNION WITH CHRIST

As the moon and its beams are one,

So that I be one with Thee,

This is my prayer to Thee, my Lord,

This is this beggar’s plea.

I would snare Thee and hold Thee ever,

In loving wifely ways;

I give Thee a daughter’s welcome,

I give Thee a sister’s praise.

As words and their meaning are linked,

Serving one purpose each,

Be Thou and I so knit, O Lord,

And through me breathe Thy speech.

O be my soul a mirror clear,

That I may see Thee there;

Dwell in my thought, my speech, my life,

Making them glad and fair.

Take Thou this body, O my Christ,

Dwell as its soul within;

To be an instant separate

I count a deadly sin.

Nārāyan Vāman Tilak.

PEACE

It is the hour of sunset, and the sky

Is robed in purple, as a lovely bride

With ruby lips and veil thrown half aside,

Waiting for her sweet lord with longing eye.

The air is fresh and fragrant, and the sea

In smiling joy its boundless bosom heaves,

With ringing music of the rising waves;

And far from here its weary whisper leaves

The broken echo of a world that raves;

Its murmur hushed in new-born notes of glee.

. . . . . .

Lulled by the laughter of the sky and earth,

The heart forgets her sorrow and suspends

Her breath in silent rapture and descends

Upon the soul the vision of its birth.

Immeasurable waters! and the sky

Immeasurable! and this wondrous light

In rainbow smiles of India, all around—

Resting and rocking and rolling in delight,

And swelling with the mirth of many a sound

That fills the ocean’s ears unceasingly.

. . . . . .

And now the mantle of approaching night

Falls gently o’er the drowsy eyes of day;

The roseate glow of evening melts away,

Softly beyond the western waves, to white.

Now o’er the earth a veil of mystery

In silver silence all around is spread;

And not a sound is heard or sight is seen

Except the lingering echoes hither led

Of boatmen’s shouts, and distant lights between

The mingling bosoms of the sky and sea.

. . . . . .

The moon hath risen, and the stars appear,

And heaven is watching with the eyes of light;

And in my heart a newer hope is bright

With varied splendours of the atmosphere.

The mind is hushed and all its motions cease

Of wayward fancy and unquiet thought;

And in the happy island of the soul

Awakes a joy in radiance unforgot—

Which o’er the world’s tumultuous uncontrol

Doth smile, and softly whisper, “Here is Peace!”

Nanikram Vasanmal Thadani.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The new leaves are red, are the rosy kisses. Also, palas and pomegranate both have red blossoms.

[2] This poem deliberately takes off from the loveliest of all Bengali popular songs, Ramprasad’s “This day will surely pass, this day will pass” (see Bengali Religious Lyrics, Thompson and Spencer, Oxford University Press).

[3] India has six seasons to our four.

[4] Urvasi, in older (i.e. Sanskrit) mythology, is a famous courtesan and dancing-girl at the court of Indra, King of the Gods. Her adventures were many; she was often sent to lure sages aside from their devotions, lest they obtained super-divine powers and threatened the dominion of the Gods (see stanza 4). But in Tagore’s poem she is very much more than her legendary character. The poem is a tangle—Indian mythology, modern science, European romance. She is the cosmic spirit of life, in the mazes of its eternal dance; she is Beauty dissociated from all human relationships; she is that world-enchanting Love which (though not in Dante’s sense) “moves the sun and other stars,” is Lucretius’s hominum divumque voluptas, Alma Venus, is Swinburne’s “perilous goddess,” “sea-foam-born.”

I have adopted a quasi-metrical form which I hope will indicate the general outline of the stanza in which this magnificent ode is written.

[5] When the Gods churned the Ocean, to recover the lost nectar of immortality, Urvasi first appeared, one of many good and bad things that came to light. With the nectar came out poison, which threatened the life of all creatures, till Siva drank it to save the worlds. Tagore has invented Urvasi’s responsibility for the nectar and poison being brought forth; at any rate, I know of no other authority for line 4 of this stanza.

[6] A jasmine.

[7] In Sanskrit mythology, heaven, the atmosphere, and earth; in later mythology, generally heaven, earth, and the underworld.

[8] In Indian mythology, there are Mounts of Sunrise and Sunsetting.

[9] From the Mādhabī.

[10] Sanskrit Urvasī.

[11] I.e. the vīnā, the lute.

[12] From the Kanyādhūp.

[13] From the Patralekha.

[14] From the Patralekha.

[15] “Spring fifth” is the fifth day of the light fortnight of the month of Māgh, when Sarasvati, the goddess of letters and wisdom, who loves the vīnā, lute, is worshipped. The month of Māgh corresponds to January-February.

[16] I.e. the goddess who carries the vīnā, or lute, in her hand.

[17] The thousand-headed snake of Heaven.

[18] Seli, or the small round string made of black wool that Guru Nanak used to wear at times.

[19] Samādhi is the mystic’s “ecstasy,” in which all consciousness of the material world is lost and the soul is face to face with the Real.

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Table of Contents

ANTHOLOGY OF MODERN INDIAN POETRY

CONTENTS

PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

EDITORIAL NOTE

ANTHOLOGY OF MODERN INDIAN POETRY AN INVOCATION

THE SECRETS OF THE SELF

WORSHIP

BEYOND THE VERGE OF TIME

STEPS

EGO

FIRE

THE ARTIST

IMAGERY

I TRANSIENCE

II O LONG BLACK HAIR

REVELATION

SPRING THAT IN MY COURTYARD

THIS DAY WILL PASS

URVASI[4]

OPEN THOU THY DOOR OF MERCY

THE DANCER

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

REMEMBRANCE

THE VISIBLE

IN THE LIGHT

CALL AND BRING HER

BASANTA PANCHAMI[15]

A WOMAN’S BEAUTY

AN EVENING ON THE LAGOON

AT THE TEMPLE

RAKSHA BANDHAN

LONGINGS

THOUGHTS

THE LOVERS

A BLUE DREAM

TULIP

RETURN TO KHAIRPUR

INDIA—ENTERTAINING TWILIGHT

ROSHANARA

IN PRAISE OF HENNA

IMPERIAL DELHI

DIRGE (In sorrow of her bereavement)

SPRING

CRADLE-SONG

JUNE SUNSET

BUNKIM CHANDRA CHATTERJI

A ROSE OF WOMEN

THE ISLAND GRAVE

INVITATION

A CHILD’S IMAGINATION

EVENING

THE SEA AT NIGHT

LACHHI From a well-known Panjābī folk-song

AZMĒ

AWAKE, MY FRIEND

MARRIAGE SONG

MYSTIC LOVE SONG FROM “THIRTY INDIAN SONGS”

THE PUNJAB AUTUMN: THE SEASON OF THE COOLING DEW (Composed on the birthday of Guru Nanak, 1916)

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

RÂJHANS (THE PRINCE OF SWANS)

LATER LYRICS: POPLAR, BEECH, AND WEEPING WILLOW

I

II

ORPHIC MYSTERIES: THE YELLOW BUTTERFLY

MYVANWY

KISMET

TANSEN

VOICE IN THE AIR

LOVE’S SAMĀDHI[19]

A CRADLE SONG

THE WAY OF POVERTY

THE LAST PRAYER

UNION WITH CHRIST

PEACE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE