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Suddenly Out from the Wonderful East

Suddenly out from the wonderful East like a woman exulting

Dawn stepped forth with a smile on her lips, and the glory of morning

Hovered over the hills; then sweet grew air with the breezes,

Sweet and keen as a wild swift virgin; the wind walked blithely,

Low was the voice of the leaves as they rustled and talked with the river,

Ganges, the sacred river. Down from the northlands crowding,

Touching the steps of the ghauts with the silver tips of their fingers

Lightly the waters ran and talked to each other of sunshine,

Lightly they laughed. But high on his stake impaled by the roadway

Hung Mandavya the mighty in marble deep meditation,

Sepulchred, dumb; on his either side were the thieves, immobile.

They were dead, made free from cruelty, ceasing from anguish,

And forgetting the thirst. But past them Ganges the mighty,

First of the streams of the earth, our Mother, remembering the ages,

Poured to the sea.

Early at dawn by her ghauts the women of Mithila gathered.

There they filled their gurgling jars, or gilding the Ganges

Bathed in her waters and laughed as they bathed there clamouring, dashing

Dew of her coolness in eyes of each other: the banks called sweetly

Mad with the musical laughter of girls and joy of their crying,

Low melodious cries. As when in a wood on the hillsides

Thousands of bulbuls flitting and calling, eating the wild plums,

Filling the ear with sweetness carry from treetop to treetop

Vermeil of crest and scarlet of tail and small brown bodies

Flitting and calling, calling and flitting, full of sweet clamour,

Full of the wine of life, even such was the sweetness and clamour,

Women bathing close by the ghauts of the radiant Ganges,

Golden-limbed or white or darker than olives when ripest,

Lovely of face or of mood, but all sweethearted and happy

Aryan women. One there seemed of another moulding

Who was aloof from the crowd and the chaos of cheerful faces.

She at one side of the stairway slowly like one half-musing

Bathed there, hiding her face in the deep cool bosom of waters,

Losing herself in Ganges, or let its pearl drops dribble

Quietly down through the mystical night of her tresses on gleaming

Shoulders, betwixt her great breasts noble as hills at noontide

Back to their hurrying home: nor heeded the laughter near her.

Only at times when the clamour grew high, she would look up smiling

Such a slow sweet serious smile as a tender mother

Watching her children at play might smile forgetting the sorrow

Down in her own still patient heart where the deep tears gathered

Swell unwept, till they turn to a sea of sorrowful pity.

Read online: https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2/suddenly-out-from-the-wonderful-east

To the Ganges

Hearken, Ganges, hearken, thou that sweepest golden to the sea,

Hearken, Mother, to my voice.

From the feet of Hari with thy waters pure thou leapest free,

Waters colder-pure than ice.

On Himaloy’s grandiose summits upright in his cirque of stones

Shiva sits in breathless air,

Where the outcast seeks his refuge, where the demon army moans,

Ganges erring through his hair.

Down the snowwhite mountains speeding, the immortal peaks and cold,

Crowd thy waves untouched by man.

From Gungotry through the valleys next their icy tops were rolled,

Bursting through Shivadry ran.

In Benares’ stainless city by defilement undefiled

Ghauts and temples lightly touched

With thy fingers as thou ranst, laughed low in pureness like a child

To his mother’s bosom clutched.

Where the steps of Rama wandered, where the feet of Krishna came,

There thou flowest, there thy hand

Clasps us, Bhagirathie, Jahnavie or Gunga, and thy name

Holier makes the Aryans’ land.

But thou leavest Aryavurtha, but thou leapest to the seas

In thy hundred mighty streams;

Nor in the unquiet Ocean vast thy grandiose journeyings cease,

Mother, say thy children’s dreams.

Down thou plungest through the Ocean, far beneath its oozy bed

In Patala’s leaden gloom

Moaning o’er her children’s pain our mother, Ganges of the dead,

Leads our wandering spirits home.

Mighty with the mighty still thou dwelledst, goddess high and pure;

Iron Bhîshma was thy son,

Who against ten thousand rushing chariots could in war endure;

Many heroes fled from one.

Devavrath the mighty, Bhîshma with his oath of iron power,

Smilingly who gave up full

Joy of human life and empire, that his father’s wish might flower

And his father’s son might rule.

Who were these that thronged thereafter? wherefore came these puny hearts

Apter for the cringing slave,

Wrangling, selfish, weak and treacherous, vendors of their nobler parts,

Sorry food for pyre and grave?

O but these are men of mind not yet with Europe’s brutal mood alloyed,

Poets singing in their chains,

Preachers teaching manly slavery, speakers thundering in the void.

Motley wear these men of brains!

Well it is for hound and watchdog fawning at a master’s feet,

Cringing, of the whip afraid!

Well it is for linnet caged to make with song his slavery sweet.

Man for other ends was made.

Man the arrogant, the splendid, man the mighty wise and strong,

Born to rule the peopled earth,

Shall he bear the alien’s insult, shall he brook the tyrant’s wrong

Like a thing of meaner birth?

Sreepoor in the east of Chand and Kédar, bright with Mogul blood,

And the Kings of Aracan

And the Atlantic pirates helped that hue,—its ruined glory flood

Kîrtinasha’s waters wan.

Buried are our cities; fallen the apexed dome, the Indian arch;

In Chitore the jackals crowd:

Krishna’s Dwarca sleeps for ever, o’er its ruined bastions march

All the Oceans thundering loud.

Still, yet still the fire of Kali on her ancient altar burns

Smouldering under smoky pall,

And the deep heart of her peoples to their Mighty Mother turns,

Listening for her Titan call.

Yet Pratapaditya’s great fierce spirit shall in might awake

In Jessore he loved and made,

Sitaram the good and mighty for his well-loved people’s sake

Leave the stillness and the shade.

And Bengal the wide and ancient where the Senas swayed of old

Up to far Benares pure,

She shall lead the Aryan peoples to the mighty doom foretold

And her glory shall endure.

By her heart of quick emotion, by her brain of living fire,

By her vibrant speech and great,

She shall lead them, they shall see their destiny in her warm desire

Opening all the doors of Fate.

By the shores of Brahmaputra or where Ganges nears the sea,

Even now a flame is born

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Read online: https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2/to-the-ganges

Vision

Who art thou that roamest

Over mountains dim

In the haunts of evening,

Sister of the gleam!

Whiter than the jasmines,

Roses dream of thee;

Softly with the violets

How thine eyes agree!

As thy raven tresses

Night is not so black,

From thy moonbright shoulders

Floating dimly back.

Feet upon the hilltops,

Lilies of delight,

With their far-off radiance

Tinge the evening bright.

In the vesper calmness

Lightly like a dove,

With thy careless eyelids

Confident of love,

As of old thou comest

Down the mountains far,

Smiling from what gardens,

Glowing from what star?

Racing from the hilltops

Like a brilliant stream,

Burning in the valleys

Marble-bright of limb,

Singing in the orchards

When the shadows fall,

With thy crooning anklets

To my heart that call,

By the darkening window

Like a slender fire,

With the night behind thee,

Daughter of desire!

Open wide the doorway,

Bid my love come in

With the night behind her

And the dawn within.

Take, O radiant fingers,

Heart and hands of me,

Hide them in thy bosom,

O felicity!

Read online: https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2/vision

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.

Read Online: https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2/the-sea-at-night

The Vedantin's Prayer

Spirit Supreme

Who musest in the silence of the heart,

Eternal gleam,

Thou only Art!

Ah, wherefore with this darkness am I veiled,

My sunlit part

By clouds assailed?

Why am I thus disfigured by desire,

Distracted, haled,

Scorched by the fire

Of fitful passions, from thy peace out-thrust

Into the gyre

Of every gust?

Betrayed to grief, o’ertaken with dismay,

Surprised by lust?

Let not my grey

Blood-clotted past repel thy sovereign ruth,

Nor even delay,

O lonely Truth!

Nor let the specious gods who ape Thee still

Deceive my youth.

These clamours still;

For I would hear the eternal voice and know

The eternal Will.

This brilliant show

Cumbering the threshold of eternity

Dispel,—bestow

The undimmed eye,

The heart grown young and clear. Rebuke in me

These hopes that cry

So deafeningly,

Remove my sullied centuries, restore

My purity.

O hidden door

Of Knowledge, open! Strength, fulfil thyself!

Love, outpour!

Read Online: https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2/the-vedantins-prayer

Rebirth

Not soon is God’s delight in us completed,

Nor with one life we end;

Termlessly in us are our spirits seated,

A termless joy intend.

Our souls and heaven are of an equal stature

And have a dateless birth;

The unending seed, the infinite mould of Nature,

They were not made on earth,

Nor to the earth do they bequeath their ashes,

But in themselves they last.

An endless future brims beneath thy lashes,

Child of an endless past.

Old memories come to us, old dreams invade us,

Lost people we have known,

Fictions and pictures; but their frames evade us,—

They stand out bare, alone.

Yet all we dream and hope are memories treasured,

Are forecasts we misspell,

But of what life or scene he who has measured

The boundless heavens can tell.

Time is a strong convention; future and present

Were living in the past;

They are one image that our wills complaisant

Into three schemes have cast.

Our past that we forget, is with us deathless,

Our births and later end

Already accomplished. To a summit breathless

Sometimes our souls ascend,

Whence the mind comes back helped; for there emerges

The ocean vast of Time

Spread out before us with its infinite surges,

Its symphonies sublime;

And even from this veil of mind the spirit

Looks out sometimes and sees

The bygone aeons that our lives inherit,

The unborn centuries:

It sees wave-trampled realms expel the Ocean,—

From the vague depths uphurled

Where now Himâloy stands, the flood’s huge motion

Sees measuring half the world;

Or else the web behind us is unravelled

And on its threads we gaze,—

Past motions of the stars, scenes long since travelled

In Time’s far-backward days.

Read Online: https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2/rebirth

Parabrahman

These wanderings of the suns, these stars at play

In the due measure that they chose of old,

Nor only these, but all the immense array

Of objects that long Time, far Space can hold,

Are divine moments. They are thoughts that form,

They are vision in the Self of things august

And therefore grandly real. Rule and norm

Are processes that they themselves adjust.

The Self of things is not their outward view,

A Force within decides. That Force is He;

His movement is the shape of things we knew,

Movement of Thought is Space and Time. A free

And sovereign master of His world within,

He is not bound by what He does or makes,

He is not bound by virtue or by sin,

Awake who sleeps and when He sleeps awakes.

He is not bound by waking or by sleep;

He is not bound by anything at all.

Laws are that He may conquer them. To creep

Or soar is at His will, to rise or fall.

One from of old possessed Himself above

Who was not anyone nor had a form,

Nor yet was formless. Neither hate nor love

Could limit His perfection, peace nor storm.

He is, we cannot say; for Nothing too

Is His conception of Himself unguessed.

He dawns upon us and we would pursue,

But who has found Him or what arms possessed?

He is not anything, yet all is He;

He is not all but far exceeds that scope.

Both Time and Timelessness sink in that sea:

Time is a wave and Space a wandering drop.

Within Himself He shadowed Being forth,

Which is a younger birth, a veil He chose

To half-conceal Him, Knowledge, nothing worth

Save to have glimpses of its mighty cause,

And high Delight, a spirit infinite,

That is the fountain of this glorious world,

Delight that labours in its opposite,

Faints in the rose and on the rack is curled.

This was the triune playground that He made

And One there sports awhile. He plucks His flowers

And by His bees is stung; He is dismayed,

Flees from Himself or has His sullen hours.

The Almighty One knew labour, failure, strife;

Knowledge forgot divined itself again:

He made an eager death and called it life,

He stung Himself with bliss and called it pain.

Read Online: https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2/parabrahman

God

Thou who pervadest all the worlds below,

Yet sitst above,

Master of all who work and rule and know,

Servant of Love!

Thou who disdainest not the worm to be

Nor even the clod,

Therefore we know by that humility

That thou art God.

Read Online: https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2/god

The Fear of Death

Death wanders through our lives at will, sweet Death

Is busy with each intake of our breath.

Why do you fear her? Lo, her laughing face

All rosy with the light of jocund grace!

A kind and lovely maiden culling flowers

In a sweet garden fresh with vernal showers,

This is the thing you fear, young portress bright

Who opens to our souls the worlds of light.

Is it because the twisted stem must feel

Pain when the tenderest hands its glory steal?

Is it because the flowerless stalk droops dull

And ghastly now that was so beautiful?

Or is it the opening portal’s horrid jar

That shakes you, feeble souls of courage bare?

Death is but changing of our robes to wait

In wedding garments at the Eternal’s gate.

Read Online: https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2/the-fear-of-death

Seasons

Day and night begin, you tell me,

When the sun may choose to set or rise.

Well, it may be; but for me their changing

Is determined only by her eyes.

Summer, spring, the fruitless winter

Hinge, you say, upon the heavenly sun?

Oh, but I have known a yearlong winter!

Spring was by her careless smiles begun.

Read Online: https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2/seasons

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.

Read Online: https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2/a-childs-imagination

Appeal

Thy youth is but a noon, of night take heed,—

A noon that is a fragment of a day,

And the swift eve all sweet things bears away,

All sweet things and all bitter, rose and weed.

For others’ bliss who lives, he lives indeed.

But thou art pitiful and ruth shouldst know.

I bid thee trifle not with fatal love,

But save our pride and dear one, O my dove,

And heaven and earth and the nether world below

Shall only with thy praises peopled grow.

Life is a bliss that cannot long abide,

But while thou livest, love. For love the sky

Was founded, earth upheaved from the deep cry

Of waters, and by love is sweetly tied

The golden cordage of our youth and pride.

Read Online: https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2/appeal

Life and Death

Life, death,—death, life; the words have led for ages

Our thought and consciousness and firmly seemed

Two opposites; but now long-hidden pages

Are opened, liberating truths undreamed.

Life only is, or death is life disguised,—

Life a short death until by life we are surprised.

Read Online: https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2/life-and-death

The Triumph-Song of Trishuncou

I shall not die.

Although this body, when the spirit tires

Of its cramped residence, shall feed the fires,

My house consumes, not I.

Leaving that case

I find out ample and ethereal room.

My spirit shall avoid the hungry tomb,

Deceiving death’s embrace.

Night shall contain

The sun in its cold depths; Time too must cease;

The stars that labour shall have their release.

I cease not, I remain.

Ere the first seeds

Were sown on earth, I was already old,

And when now unborn planets shall grow cold

My history proceeds.

I am the light

In stars, the strength of lions and the joy

Of mornings; I am man and maid and boy,

Protean, infinite.

I am a tree

That stands out singly from the infinite blue;

I am the quiet falling of the dew

And am the unmeasured sea.

I hold the sky

Together and upbear the teeming earth.

I was the eternal thinker at my birth

And shall be, though I die.

Read Online: https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2/the-triumph-song-of-trishuncou

Karma (Radha's Complaint)

Love, but my words are vain as air!

In my sweet joyous youth, a heart untried,

Thou tookst me in Love’s sudden snare,

Thou wouldst not let me in my home abide.

And now I have nought else to try,

But I will make my soul one strong desire

And into Ocean leaping die:

So shall my heart be cooled of all its fire.

Die and be born to life again

As Nanda’s son, the joy of Braja’s girls,

And I will make thee Radha then,

A laughing child’s face set with lovely curls.

Then I will love thee and then leave;

Under the codome’s boughs when thou goest by

Bound to the water morn or eve,

Lean on that tree fluting melodiously.

Thou shalt hear me and fall at sight

Under my charm; my voice shall wholly move

Thy simple girl’s heart to delight;

Then shalt thou know the bitterness of love.

(From an old Bengali poem)

Read Online: https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2/karma

Revelation

Someone leaping from the rocks

Past me ran with wind-blown locks

Like a startled bright surmise

Visible to mortal eyes,—

Just a cheek of frightened rose

That with sudden beauty glows,

Just a footstep like the wind

And a hurried glance behind,

And then nothing,—as a thought

Escapes the mind ere it is caught.

Someone of the heavenly rout

From behind the veil ran out.

Read Online: https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2/revelation

To the Sea

O grey wild sea,

Thou hast a message, thunderer, for me.

Their huge wide backs

Thy monstrous billows raise, abysmal cracks

Dug deep between.

One pale boat flutters over them, hardly seen.

I hear thy roar

Call me, “Why dost thou linger on the shore

With fearful eyes

Watching my tops visit their foam-washed skies?

This trivial boat

Dares my vast battering billows and can float.

Death if it find,

Are there not many thousands left behind?

Dare my wide roar,

Nor cling like cowards to the easy shore.

Come down and know

What rapture lives in danger and o’erthrow.”

Yes, thou great sea,

I am more mighty and outbillow thee.

On thy tops I rise;

‘Tis an excuse to dally with the skies.

I sink below

The bottom of the clamorous world to know.

On the safe land

To linger is to lose what God has planned

For man’s wide soul,

Who set eternal godhead for its goal.

Therefore He arrayed

Danger and difficulty like seas and made

Pain and defeat,

And put His giant snares around our feet.

The cloud He informs

With thunder and assails us with His storms,

That man may grow

King over pain and victor of o’erthrow

Matching his great

Unconquerable soul with adverse Fate.

Take me, be

My way to climb the heavens, thou rude great sea.

I will seize thy mane,

O lion, I will tame thee and disdain;

Or else below

Into thy salt abysmal caverns go,

Receive thy weight

Upon me and be stubborn as my Fate.

I come, O Sea,

To measure my enormous self with thee.

Read Online: https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2/to-the-sea

Immortal Love

If I had wooed thee for thy colour rare,

Cherished the rose in thee

Or wealth of Nature’s brilliants in thy hair,

O woman fair,

My love might cease to be.

Or, had I sought thee for thy virtuous youth

And tender yearning speech,

Thy swift compassion and deliberate truth,

O heart of ruth,

Time might pursue, might reach.

But I have loved thee for thyself indeed

And with myself have snared;

Immortal to immortal I made speed.

Change I exceed

And am for Time prepared.

Read Online: https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2/immortal-love

O love, what more shall I, shall Radha speak,

Since mortal words are weak?

In life, in death,

In being and in breath

No other lord but thee can Radha seek.

About thy feet the mighty net is wound

Wherein my soul they bound;

Myself resigned

To servitude my mind;

My heart than thine no sweeter slavery found.

I, Radha, thought; through the three worlds my gaze

I sent in wild amaze;

I was alone.

None called me “Radha!”, none;

I saw no hand to clasp, no friendly face.

I sought my father’s house; my father’s sight

Was empty of delight;

No tender friend

Her loving voice would lend;

My cry came back unanswered from the night.

Therefore to this sweet sanctuary I brought

My chilled and shuddering thought.

Ah, suffer, sweet,

To thy most faultless feet

That I should cling unchid; ah, spurn me not!

Spurn me not, dear, from thy beloved breast,

A woman weak, unblest.

Thus let me cling,

Thus, thus about my king

And thus remain caressing and caressed.

I, Radha, thought; without my life’s sweet lord,

—Strike now thy mightiest chord—

I had no power

To live one simple hour;

His absence slew my soul as with a sword.

If one brief moment steal thee from mine eyes,

My heart within me dies.

As girls who keep

The treasures of the deep,

I string thee round my neck and on my bosom prize.

Read Online: https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2/radhas-appeal

What is this talk of slayer and of slain?

Swords are not sharp to slay nor floods assuage

This flaming soul. Mortality and pain

Are mere conventions of a mightier stage.

As when a hero by his doom pursued

Falls like a pillar of the huge world uptorn

Shaking the hearts of men and awe-imbued,

Silent the audience sits or weeps forlorn,

Meanwhile behind the stage the actor sighs

Deep-lunged relief, puts off what he has been

And talks with friends that waited or from the flies

Watches the quiet of the closing scene,

Even so the unwounded spirits of the slain

Beyond our vision passing live again.

Read online:https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2/what-is-this-talk

To Weep because a Glorious Sun

To weep because a glorious sun has set

Which the next morn shall gild the east again,

To mourn that mighty strengths must yield to fate

Which by that fall a double force attain,

To shrink from pain without whose friendly strife

Joy could not be, to make a terror of death

Who smiling beckons us to farther life

And is a bridge for the persistent breath;

Despair and anguish and the tragic grief

Of dry set eyes or such disastrous tears

As rend the heart though meant for its relief

And all man’s ghastly company of fears

Are born of folly that believes this span

Of brittle life can limit immortal man.

Read Online: https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2/to-weep-because-a-glorious-sun

The Just Man

Where is the man whom hope nor fear can move?

    Him the wise Gods approve.

The man divine of motive pure and steadfast will

        Unbent to ill,

Whose way is plain nor swerves for power or gold

    The high, straight path to hold:—

Him only wise the wise Gods deem, him pure of lust;

        Him only just.

Tho’ men give rubies, tho’ they bring a prize

    Sweeter than Helen’s eyes—

Yea, costlier things than these things were, they shall not win

        That man to sin.

Tho’ the strong lords of earth his doom desire,

    He shall not heed their ire,

Nor shall the numerous commons’ stormy voice compel

        His heart nor quell.

Tho’ Ocean all her purple pride unroll,

    It stirs, not shakes his soul.

He sees the billows lift their cowled heads on high

        With undimmed eye.

Pure fields he sees and groves of calm delight;

    He turns into the night.

Hell is before; the swords await him; friends betray;

        He holds his way.

He shall not fear tho’ heaven in lightnings fall

    Nor thunder’s furious call,

Nor earthquake nor the sea: tho’ fire, tho’ flood assail,

        He shall not quail.

Tho’ God tear out the heavens like a page

    And break the hills for rage,

Blot out the sun from being and all the great stars quench,

        He will not blench.

Read Online: https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2/the-just-man

A Doubt

Many boons the new years make us

    But the old world’s gifts were three,

Dove of Cypris, wine of Bacchus,

    Pan’s sweet pipe in Sicily.

Love, wine, song, the core of living

    Sweetest, oldest, musicalest.

If at end of forward striving

    These, Life’s first, proved also best?

Read Online: https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2/a-doubt

I have a Hundred Lives

I have a hundred lives before me yet

To grasp thee in, O spirit ethereal,

Be sure I will with heart insatiate

Pursue thee like a hunter through them all.

Thou yet shalt turn back on the eternal way

And with awakened vision watch me come

Smiling a little at errors past, and lay

Thy eager hand in mine, its proper home.

Meanwhile made happy by thy happiness

I shall approach thee in things and people dear

And in thy spirit’s motions half-possess

Loving what thou hast loved, shall feel thee near,

Until I lay my hands on thee indeed

Somewhere among the stars, as ‘twas decreed.

Read Online: https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2/i-have-a-hundred-lives

I have gathered my dreams in a silver air

    Between the gold and the blue

And wrapped them softly and left them there,

    My jewelled dreams of you.

I had hoped to build a rainbow bridge

    Marrying the soil to the sky

And sow in this dancing planet midge

    The moods of infinity.

But too bright were our heavens, too far away,

    Too frail their ethereal stuff;

Too splendid and sudden our light could not stay;

    The roots were not deep enough.

He who would bring the heavens here

    Must descend himself into clay

And the burden of earthly nature bear

    And tread the dolorous way.

Coercing my godhead I have come down

    Here on the sordid earth,

Ignorant, labouring, human grown

    Twixt the gates of death and birth.

I have been digging deep and long

    Mid a horror of filth and mire

A bed for the golden river’s song,

    A home for the deathless fire.

I have laboured and suffered in Matter’s night

    To bring the fire to man;

But the hate of hell and human spite

    Are my meed since the world began.

For man’s mind is the dupe of his animal self;

    Hoping its lusts to win,

He harbours within him a grisly Elf

    Enamoured of sorrow and sin.

The grey Elf shudders from heaven’s flame

    And from all things glad and pure;

Only by pleasure and passion and pain

    His drama can endure.

All around is darkness and strife;

    For the lamps that men call suns

Are but halfway gleams on this stumbling life

    Cast by the Undying Ones.

Man lights his little torches of hope

    That lead to a failing edge;

A fragment of Truth is his widest scope,

    An inn his pilgrimage.

The Truth of truths men fear and deny,

    The Light of lights they refuse;

To ignorant gods they lift their cry

    Or a demon altar choose.

All that was found must again be sought,

    Each enemy slain revives,

Each battle for ever is fought and refought

    Through vistas of fruitless lives.

My gaping wounds are a thousand and one

    And the Titan kings assail,

But I dare not rest till my task is done

    And wrought the eternal will.

How they mock and sneer, both devils and men!

    “Thy hope is Chimera’s head

Painting the sky with its fiery stain;

    Thou shalt fall and thy work lie dead.

“Who art thou that babblest of heavenly ease

    And joy and golden room

To us who are waifs on inconscient seas

    And bound to life’s iron doom?

“This earth is ours, a field of Night

    For our petty flickering fires.

How shall it brook the sacred Light

    Or suffer a god’s desires?

“Come, let us slay him and end his course!

    Then shall our hearts have release

From the burden and call of his glory and force

    And the curb of his wide white peace.”

But the god is there in my mortal breast

    Who wrestles with error and fate

And tramples a road through mire and waste

    For the nameless Immaculate.

A voice cried, “Go where none have gone!

    Dig deeper, deeper yet

Till thou reach the grim foundation stone

    And knock at the keyless gate.”

I saw that a falsehood was planted deep

    At the very root of things

Where the grey Sphinx guards God’s riddle sleep

    On the Dragon’s outspread wings.

I left the surface gauds of mind

    And life’s unsatisfied seas

And plunged through the body’s alleys blind

    To the nether mysteries.

I have delved through the dumb Earth’s dreadful heart

    And heard her black mass’ bell.

I have seen the source whence her agonies part

    And the inner reason of hell.

Above me the dragon murmurs moan

    And the goblin voices flit;

I have pierced the Void where Thought was born,

    I have walked in the bottomless pit.

On a desperate stair my feet have trod

    Armoured with boundless peace,

Bringing the fires of the splendour of God

    Into the human abyss.

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Read Online: https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2/a-gods-labour

A Tree

A tree beside the sandy river-beach

    Holds up its topmost boughs

Like fingers towards the skies they cannot reach,

    Earth-bound, heaven-amorous.

This is the soul of man. Body and brain

Hungry for earth our heavenly flight detain.

Read Online: https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2/a-tree

Because Thou Art

Because Thou art All-beauty and All-bliss,

    My soul blind and enamoured yearns for Thee;

It bears Thy mystic touch in all that is

    And thrills with the burden of that ecstasy.

Behind all eyes I meet Thy secret gaze

    And in each voice I hear Thy magic tune:

Thy sweetness hunts my heart through Nature’s ways;

    Nowhere it beats now from Thy snare immune.

It loves Thy body in all living things;

    Thy joy is there in every leaf and stone:

The moments bring Thee on their fiery wings;

    Sight’s endless artistry is Thou alone.

Time voyages with Thee upon its prow,—

And all the future’s passionate hope is Thou.

Read Online: https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2/because-thou-art

The End - Poem By Sri Aurobindo

Is this the end of all that we have been,

    And all we did or dreamed,—

A name unremembered and a form undone,—

    Is this the end?

A body rotting under a slab of stone

    Or turned to ash in fire,

A mind dissolved, lost its forgotten thoughts,—

    Is this the end?

Our little hours that were and are no more,

    Our passions once so high

Dying mocked by the still earth and calm sunshine,—

    Is this the end?

Our yearnings for the human Godward climb

    Passing to other hearts

Deceived, while sinks towards death and hell the world,—

    Is this the end?

Fallen is the harp; shattered it lies and mute;

    Is the unseen player dead?

Because the tree is felled where the bird sang,

    Must the song too hush?

One in the mind who planned and willed and thought,

    Worked to reshape earth’s fate,

One in the heart who loved and yearned and hoped,

    Does he too end?

The Immortal in the mortal is his Name;

    An artist Godhead here

Ever remoulds himself in diviner shapes,

    Unwilling to cease

Till all is done for which the stars were made,

    Till the heart discovers God

And soul knows itself. And even then

    There is no end.

Read Online: https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2/the-end

The Blue Bird

I am the bird of God in His blue;

    Divinely high and clear

I sing the notes of the sweet and the true

    For the god’s and the seraph’s ear.

I rise like a fire from the mortal’s earth

    Into a griefless sky

And drop in the suffering soil of his birth

    Fire-seeds of ecstasy.

My pinions soar beyond Time and Space

    Into unfading Light;

I bring the bliss of the Eternal’s face

    And the boon of the Spirit’s sight.

I measure the worlds with my ruby eyes;

    I have perched on Wisdom’s tree

Thronged with the blossoms of Paradise

    By the streams of Eternity.

Nothing is hid from my burning heart;

    My mind is shoreless and still;

My song is rapture’s mystic art,

    My flight immortal will.

Read online: https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2/the-blue-bird

The Silence

Into the Silence, into the Silence,

Arise, O Spirit immortal,

Away from the turning Wheel, breaking the magical Circle.

Ascend, single and deathless:

Care no more for the whispers and the shoutings in the darkness,

Pass from the sphere of the grey and the little,

Leaving the cry and the struggle,

Into the Silence for ever.

Vast and immobile, formless and marvellous,

Higher than Heaven, wider than the universe,

In a pure glory of being,

In a bright stillness of self-seeing,

Communing with a boundlessness voiceless and intimate,

Make thy knowledge too high for thought, thy joy too deep for emotion;

At rest in the unchanging Light, mute with the wordless self-vision,

Spirit, pass out of thyself; Soul, escape from the clutch of Nature.

All thou hast seen cast from thee, O Witness.

Turn to the Alone and the Absolute, turn to the Eternal:

Be only eternity, peace and silence,

O world-transcending nameless Oneness,

Spirit immortal.

==> Beyond the Silence

Out from the Silence, out from the Silence,
Carrying with thee the ineffable Substance,
Carrying with thee the splendour and wideness,
Ascend, O Spirit immortal.
Assigning to Time its endless meaning,
Blissful enter into the clasp of the Timeless.
Awake in the living Eternal, taken to the bosom of love of the Infinite,
Live self-found in his endless completeness,
Drowned in his joy and his sweetness,
Thy heart close to the heart of the Godhead for ever.

Vast, God-possessing, embraced by the Wonderful,
Lifted by the All-Beautiful into his infinite beauty,
Love shall envelop thee endless and fathomless,
Joy unimaginable, ecstasy illimitable,
Knowledge omnipotent, Might omniscient,
Light without darkness, Truth that is dateless.
One with the Transcendent, calm, universal,
Single and free, yet innumerably living,
All in thyself and thyself in all dwelling,
Act in the world with thy being beyond it.
Soul, exceed life’s boundaries; Spirit, surpass the universe.
Outclimbing the summits of Nature,
Transcending and uplifting the soul of the finite,
Rise with the world in thy bosom,
O Word gathered into the heart of the Ineffable.
One with the Eternal, live in his infinity,
Drowned in the Absolute, found in the Godhead,
Swan of the supreme and spaceless ether wandering winged through the universe,
Spirit immortal.

Read online: https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2/ascent#the-silence

The Yogi on the Whirlpool

On a dire whirlpool in the hurrying river,

    A life-stilled statue naked, bronze, severe,

    He kept the posture of a deathless seer

Unshaken by the mad water’s leap and shiver.

Thought could not think in him, flesh could not quiver;

    The feet of Time could not adventure here;

    Only some unknown Power nude and austere,

Only a Silence mighty to deliver.

His spirit world-wide and companionless,

    Seated above the torrent of the days

        On the deep eddy that our being forms,

Silent sustained the huge creation’s stress,

    Unchanged supporting Nature’s rounds and norms,

        Immobile background of the cosmic race.

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Who - Poem By Sri Aurobindo

In the blue of the sky, in the green of the forest,

    Whose is the hand that has painted the glow?

When the winds were asleep in the womb of the ether,

    Who was it roused them and bade them to blow?

He is lost in the heart, in the cavern of Nature,

    He is found in the brain where He builds up the thought:

In the pattern and bloom of the flowers He is woven,

    In the luminous net of the stars He is caught.

In the strength of a man, in the beauty of woman,

    In the laugh of a boy, in the blush of a girl;

The hand that sent Jupiter spinning through heaven,

    Spends all its cunning to fashion a curl.

These are His works and His veils and His shadows;

    But where is He then? by what name is He known?

Is He Brahma or Vishnu? a man or a woman?

    Bodied or bodiless? twin or alone?

We have love for a boy who is dark and resplendent,

    A woman is lord of us, naked and fierce.

We have seen Him a-muse on the snow of the mountains,

    We have watched Him at work in the heart of the spheres.

We will tell the whole world of His ways and His cunning:

    He has rapture of torture and passion and pain;

He delights in our sorrow and drives us to weeping,

    Then lures with His joy and His beauty again.

All music is only the sound of His laughter,

    All beauty the smile of His passionate bliss;

Our lives are His heart-beats, our rapture the bridal

    Of Radha and Krishna, our love is their kiss.

He is strength that is loud in the blare of the trumpets,

    And He rides in the car and He strikes in the spears;

He slays without stint and is full of compassion;

    He wars for the world and its ultimate years.

In the sweep of the worlds, in the surge of the ages,

    Ineffable, mighty, majestic and pure,

Beyond the last pinnacle seized by the thinker

    He is throned in His seats that for ever endure.

The Master of man and his infinite Lover,

    He is close to our hearts, had we vision to see;

We are blind with our pride and the pomp of our passions,

    We are bound in our thoughts where we hold ourselves free.

It is He in the sun who is ageless and deathless,

    And into the midnight His shadow is thrown;

When darkness was blind and engulfed within darkness,

    He was seated within it immense and alone.

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O Face that I have Loved - Poem By Sri Aurobindo

O face that I have loved until no face

Beneath the quiet heavens such glory wear,

They say you are not beautiful,—no snare

Of twilight in the changing mysticness

Or deep enhaloed secrecy of hair,

Soft largeness in the eyes I dare not kiss!

Unreal all your bosom’s dreadful bliss.

Too narrow are your brows they say to bear

The temple of vast beauty in its span

Or chaste cold bosom to house fierily

Beauty that maddens all the heart of man.

I know not; this I know that utterly

My soul is by some magic curls surprised,

Some glances have my heart immortalized.

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Saraswati with the Lotus - Poem By Sri Aurobindo

Thy tears fall fast, O mother, on its bloom,

O white-armed mother, like honey fall thy tears;

Yet even their sweetness can no more relume

The golden light, the fragrance heaven rears,

The fragrance and the light for ever shed

Upon his lips immortal who is dead.

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The Just Man - Poem By Sri Aurobindo

Where is the man whom hope nor fear can move?

    Him the wise Gods approve.

The man divine of motive pure and steadfast will

        Unbent to ill,

Whose way is plain nor swerves for power or gold

    The high, straight path to hold:—

Him only wise the wise Gods deem, him pure of lust;

        Him only just.

Tho’ men give rubies, tho’ they bring a prize

    Sweeter than Helen’s eyes—

Yea, costlier things than these things were, they shall not win

        That man to sin.

Tho’ the strong lords of earth his doom desire,

    He shall not heed their ire,

Nor shall the numerous commons’ stormy voice compel

        His heart nor quell.

Tho’ Ocean all her purple pride unroll,

    It stirs, not shakes his soul.

He sees the billows lift their cowled heads on high

        With undimmed eye.

Pure fields he sees and groves of calm delight;

    He turns into the night.

Hell is before; the swords await him; friends betray;

        He holds his way.

He shall not fear tho’ heaven in lightnings fall

    Nor thunder’s furious call,

Nor earthquake nor the sea: tho’ fire, tho’ flood assail,

        He shall not quail.

Tho’ God tear out the heavens like a page

    And break the hills for rage,

Blot out the sun from being and all the great stars quench,

        He will not blench.

To the Cuckoo - Poem By Sri Aurobindo

Sounds of the wakening world, the year’s increase,

Passage of wind and all his dewy powers

With breath and laughter of new-bathed flowers

And that deep light of heaven above the trees

Awake mid leaves that muse in golden peace

Sweet noise of birds, but most in heavenly showers

The cuckoo’s voice pervades the lucid hours,

Is priest and summoner of these melodies.

The spent and weary streams refresh their youth

At that creative rain and barren groves

Regain their face of flowers; in thee the ruth

Of Nature wakening her dead children moves.

But chiefly to renew thou hast the art

Fresh childhood in the obscured human heart.

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To a Hero-Worshipper - I

My life is then a wasted ereme,

    My song but idle wind

    Because you merely find

In all this woven wealth of rhyme

Harsh figures with harsh music wound,

The uncouth voice of gorgeous birds,

A ruby carcanet of sound,

    A cloud of lovely words?

I am, you say, no magic rod,

    No cry oracular,

    No swart and ominous star,

No Sinai thunder voicing God.

I have no burden to my song,

No smouldering word instinct with fire,

No spell to chase triumphant wrong,

    No spirit-sweet desire.

Mine is not Byron’s lightning spear,

    Nor Wordsworth’s lucid strain

    Nor Shelley’s lyric pain,

Nor Keats’, the poet without peer.

I by the Indian waters vast

Did glimpse the magic of the past,

And on the oaten pipe I play

Warped echoes of an earlier day.

To a Hero-Worshipper - II

My friend, when first my spirit woke,

    I trod the scented maze

    Of Fancy’s myriad ways,

I studied Nature like a book

Men rack for meanings: yet I find

No rubric in the scarlet rose,

No moral in the murmuring wind,

    No message in the snows.

For me the daisy shines a star,

    The crocus flames a spire,

    A horn of golden fire,

Narcissus glows a silver bar:

Cowslips, the golden breath of God,

I deem the poet’s heritage,

And lilies silvering the sod

    Breathe fragrance from his page.

No herald of the sun am I

    But in a moonlit vale

    A russet nightingale

Who pours sweet song, he knows not why,

Who pours like wine a gurgling note

Paining with sound his swarthy throat,

Who pours sweet song he recks not why

Nor hushes ever lest he die.

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Phaethon - Poem By Sri Aurobindo

Ye weeping poplars by the shelvy slope

From murmurous lawns downdropping to the stream

On whom the dusk air like a sombre dream

Broods and a twilight ignorant of hope,

Say what compulsion drear has bid you seam

Your mossy sides with drop on eloquent drop

That in warm rillets from your eyes elope?

Is it for the too patient, sure decay

Pale-gilded Autumn, aesthete of the years,

A gorgeous death, a fading glory wears

That thus along its tufted, downy way

Creeps slothfully this ooze of amber tears,

And thus with tearful gusts your branches sway

Sighing a requiem to your emerald day?

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O Letter Dull and Cold - Poem By Sri Aurobindo

O letter dull and cold, how can she read

Gladly these lifeless lines, no fire that prove,

When others even their passionate hearts exceed

Caressing her sweet name with words of love?

O me that I could force this barrier, turn

My heart to syllables, make all desire

One burning word, then would my letters yearn

With some reflection of that hidden fire.

Ah if I could, what then? This fiery pit

Within for human eyes was never meant.

All hearts would view with horror or with hate

A picture not of earthly lineament.

Yourself even, sweet, would start with terror back

As at the hissing of a sudden snake.

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The Silver Call

There is a godhead of unrealised things

    To which Time’s splendid gains are hoarded dross;

A cry seems near, a rustle of silver wings

    Calling to heavenly joy by earthly loss.

All eye has seen and all the ear has heard

    Is a pale illusion by some greater voice

And mightier vision; no sweet sound or word,

    No passion of hues that make the heart rejoice

Can equal those diviner ecstasies.

    A Mind beyond our mind has sole the ken

Of those yet unimagined harmonies,

    The fate and privilege of unborn men.

As rain-thrashed mire the marvel of the rose,

Earth waits that distant marvel to disclose.

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The Nightingale

Hark in the trees the low-voiced nightingale

Has slain the silence with a jubilant cry;

How clear in the hushed night, yet voluble

And various as sweet water wavering by,

    That murmurs in a channel small

    Beneath a low grey wall,

    Then sings amid the fitful rye.

    O sweet grave Siren of the night,

        Astarte’s eremite,

Thou feedest every leaf with solemn glee.

Lo, the night-winds sigh happier, being chid by thee.

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Song

O lady Venus, shine on me,

O rose-crowned goddess from thy seas

Radiant among the Cyclades!

Rose-crowned, puissant like the sea.

And bring thy Graces three,

The swift companions of thy mirthful mind.

Bring thy sweet rogue with thee,

Thy careless archer, beautiful and blind.

A woman’s royal heart

Bid him to wound and bind her who is free;

Bind her for me!

Nor for the sweet bright crimson blood may start

In little rillets from the little heart

Spare her thy sport to be,

Goddess, she spared not me.

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Epitaph

Moulded of twilight and the vesper star

Midnight in her with noon made quiet war;—

Moulded twixt life and death, Love came between;

Then the night fell; twilight faded, the star had been.

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Epigram

If thou wouldst traverse Time with vagrant feet

    Nor make the poles thy limit fill not then

Thy wallet with the fancy’s cloying sweet

    Which is no stay to heaven-aspiring men,

But follow wisdom since alone the wise

Can walk through fire with unblinking eyes.

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A Thing Seen

She in her garden, near the high grey wall,

Sleeping; a silver-bodied birch-tree tall

That held its garments o’er her wide and green,

Building a parapet of shade between,

Forbade the amorous sun to look on her.

No fold of gracious raiment was astir.

The wind walked softly; silent moved a cloud

Listening; of all the tree no leaf was loud

But guarded a divine expectant hush

Thrilled by the silence of a hidden thrush.

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Thou didst Mistake

Thou didst mistake, thy spirit’s infant flight

Opening its lovely wings upon the sun

Paused o’er the first strong bloom that met thy sight

Thinking perhaps it was the only one.

But all this fragrant garden was beyond.

Winds came to thee with hints of honey; day

Disclosed a brighter hope than this unsunned

Thought-sheltered heart and called thee far away.

Thou didst mistake. Must I then rage, grow ill,

With tortured vanity and think it love,

Miscall with brutal names my lady’s will

Fouling thy snowwhite image, O my dove?

Is not thy kiss enough, though only one,

For all eternity to live upon?

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Rose, I have Loved

Rose, I have loved thy beauty, as I love

The dress that thou hast worn, the transient grass,

O’er which thy happy careless footsteps move,

The yet-thrilled waysides that have watched thee pass.

Soul, I have loved thy sweetness as men love

The necessary air they crave to breathe,

The sunlight lavished from the skies above,

And firmness of the earth their steps beneath.

But were that beauty all, my love might cease

Like love of weaker spirits; were’t thy charm

And grace of soul, mine might with age decrease

Or find in Death a silence and a term,

But rooted in the unnameable in thee

Shall triumph and transcend eternity.

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Because thy Flame is Spent

Because thy flame is spent, shall mine grow less,

O bud, O wonder of the opening rose?

Why both my soul and Love it would disgrace

If I could trade in love, begin and close

My long account of passion, like a book

Of merchant’s credit given to be repaid,

Or not returned, struck off with lowering look

Like a bad debt uncritically made.

What thou couldst give, thou gav’st me, one sweet smile

Worth all the sunlight that the years contain,

One month of months when thy sweet spirit awhile

Fluttered o’er mine half-thinking to remain.

What I could give, I gave thee, to my last breath

Immortal love, immovable by death.

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'Euphrosyne' - Sonnet - Poem by Sri Aurobindo

Child of the infant years, Euphrosyne,

Bird of my boyhood, youth’s blithe deity!

If I have hymned thee not with lyric phrase,

Preferring Eros or Aglaia’s praise,

Frown not, thou lovely spirit, leave me not.

Man worships the ungrasped. His vagrant thought

Still busy with the illimitable void

Lives all the time by little things upbuoyed

Which he contemns; the wife unsung remains

Sharing his pleasures, taking half his pains

While to dream faces mounts the poet’s song.

Yet she makes not their lyric right her wrong,

Knowing her homely eyes his sorrow’s star

Smiles at the eclipsing brow untouched by care.

Content with human love lightly she yields

The immortal fancy its Elysian fields.

Link To Sonnet: https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/02/euphrosyne

'The Three Cries of Deiphobus' - Sonnet - Poem by Sri Aurobindo

Awake, awake, O sleeping men of Troy,

That sleep and know not in the grasp of Hell

I perish in the treacherous lonely night

To foes betrayed, environed and undone.

    O Trojans, will ye sleep until the doom

Have slipped its leash and bark upon your doors?

Not long will ye, unless in Pluto’s realm,

Have slumber, since forsaken among foes

I drink the bitter cup of lonely death

Unheeded and from helping faces far.

    O Trojans, Trojans, yet again I call!

Swift help we need or Ilion’s days are done.

Link To Poem: https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/02/the-three-cries-of-deiphobus