The Birth of the War-God

cANTO one : second rendering

            A God concealed in mountain majesty

Embodied to our cloudy physical sight

In snowy summits and green-gloried slopes,

To northward of the many-rivered land,

Measuring the earth in an enormous ease,

Immense Himaloy dwells¹ and in the moan

Of eastern ocean and in western floods

Plunges his giant sides. Him once the hills

Imagined as the mighty calf of Earth

When the wideness milked her udders; gems brilliant-rayed

Were born and herbs on every mountain marge.

So in his infinite riches is he dressed,

Not all his snows can slay his opulence,

And though they chill the feet of heaven, her sons

Forget that fault mid² all his crowding gifts,

As faints in luminous floods the gloomy mark

On the moon's argent disc; they choose his vales

For playground, his hill-peaks for divine homes.

Brightness of minerals on his rocks is spread

Which to the Apsaras give adorning hues

In their love-sports and in their dances; flung

On the split clouds in their brilliant colours ranged,

Like an untimely sunset's glories live.

Far down the clouds droop to his girdle-waist;

Then by the low-hung plateaus' coolness drawn

The siddhas in soft shade repose, but flee

Soon upward by wild driving rain distressed

To summits splendid in the veilless sun.

The hunter seeks for traces on his sides,

And though their reddened footprints are expunged

By the new-falling snows, yet can he find

The path his prey the mighty lions go;

For, it is told, pearls from slain elephants

¹ lives ^a f

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Are clotted, fallen from their hollow claws,

And tell their dangerous passage. When he rests

Tired with the chase and bares to winds his brow,

They come, fay-breezes dancing on the slopes,

Shaking the cedars on Himaloy's breast,

Scattering the peacock's gorgeous-plumed attire,

And with spray of Ganges' cascades on their wings

Sprinkling his hair. He makes the grottoed glens

His chambers of desire and in the night

When the strong forest-wanderer is lain

Twined with his love, marrying with hers his sighs,

The luminous herbs from the dim banks around

Strange¹ oilless lamps, give light to see his joy.

Nor only earthly footsteps tread the grass,

Or mortal love finds there its happy scenes.

The birch-leaves of the hills love-pages are;

Like spots of age upon the tusky kings,

In ink of liquid metals letters strange

Make crimson signs, pages where passion burns

And divine Circes pen heart-moving things.

The Kinnars wander singing in his glades

He fills the hollows of his bamboo trees²

With the wind rising from his deep ravines,

And with a moaning and melodious sound

Breathes from his rocky mouths as if he meant

To flute,³ time-giver to their minstrelsies.

The delicate heels of the maned Kinnari

Are by his frosted slabs of snow distressed,

Yet for her burden of breasts and heavy hips

Can change not her slow motion's swaying grace

To escape the biting pathway's chill unease.

She too in grottoed caverns lies embraced.

When from her limbs is plucked the raiment fine

Of the Kinnar's shame-fast love, then hanging come

The concave clouds across the grotto doors

And make chance curtains against mortal eyes,

Shielding the naked goddess from our sight.

' faint ^a flutes ³ pipe 

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The elephant-herds there wander: resinous trees

Shaken and rubbed by their afflicting brows

Loose down their odorous tears in creamy drops;

The winds upon the plateaus burdened pant

And make of all the air a scented dream.

The yaks are there; they lift their bushy tails

And in their lashings scatter gleamings white

As moonbeams shed upon the sleeping hills:

Brightly they seem to fan the mountain king.

He hides in his deep caves the hunted night

Fearful of the day's brilliant eyes. His peaks

Seem to outpeer the lower-circling sun,

Which sends its upward beams as if to wake

Immortal lilies in his tarns unplucked

By the seven^ sages in their starry march.

Such is Himaloy's greatness, such his strength

That seems to uplift to heaven the earth. He bears

The honey Soma plant upon his heights,

Of Godward symbols the exalted source.

He by the Master of sacrifice was crowned

The ancient monarch of a million hills.

In equal rites he to his giant bed

The mind-born child of the world-fathers bore.

The earthly comrade and the help fellow

Of Meru their sublime celestial home,

Stable of soul, to make a stable race

Mena he wed whose wisdom seers adored.

Their joy of love was like themselves immense,

And in the wide felicitous lapse of time

Its long and puissant ecstasy bore fruit;

Bearing the banner of her unchanged youth

And beauty to charmed motherhood she crossed.

Mainac she bore, the guest of the deep seas,

Upon whose peaks the serpent women play,

Their jewelled tresses glittering through the gloom,

Race of a cavernous and monstrous world;

There fled when Indra tore the mountains' wings, 

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His divine essence bore no cruel sign,¹

Nor felt the anguish of the thunder's scars.²

Next to a nobler load her womb save place;               

Nor Daksha's daughter, Shiva's wife, the Lord

Of Being, in her angry will who left

Her body lifeless³ in her father's hall,

Sought in their mountain home a happier birth,

And by her in a trance profound of joy

Conceived was born of strong⁴ Himaloy's seed.

Out of the soul unseen the splendid child

Came like success with daring for its sire           

And for its mother clear-eyed thought sublime.

Then were the regions subtle with delight,

Soft, pure, from cloud and stain; then heaven's shells

Blew sweetly, flowery rain came drifting down,

Earth answered to the rapture of the skies

And all her moving and unmoving life

Felt happiness because the Bride was born.

So the fair mother by this daughter shone

So that new beauty radiated its beams

As if a land of lapis lazuli

Torn by the thunder's voice shot suddenly forth

A jewelled sprouting from the mother bed.

Parvati was she called the mountain's child,

When love to love cried answer in her house

And to that sound she turned her lovely face,

But afterdays the great maternal name

Of Uma gave. On her as fair she grew

Her father banqueted his sateless look,

He felt himself a lamp fulfilled in light,

Like Heaven's silent path by Ganges voiceful made,

Like⁶ thought made glorious by a perfect word.

Like bees that winging come upon the wind

Among the infinite sweets of honeyed spring

Drawn to the mango-flower's delicious breast,

All eyes sought her. Her little childlike form

' mark,             ² lightning's bite. ^a soulless               ⁴ great     ⁶ Or

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Increasing to new curves of loveliness,

She grew like the moon's arc from day to day.

Among her fair companions of delight

She built frail walls of heavenly Ganges' sands

Or ran to seize the tossing ball or pleased

With puppet children her maternal mind,

Absorbed in play, the mother of the worlds.

And easily too to her as if in play

All sciences and wisdoms crowding came

Out of her former life, like swans that haste

In autumn to a sacred river's shores;

They started from her mind as grow at night

Born from some luminous herb its glimmering rays.

To her child-body youth, a charm, arrived

Adorning every limb, a wine of joy

To intoxicate the heart, the eyes that gazed,

Shooting the arrows of love's curving bow.

Even as a painting grows beneath the hand

Of a great master, as the lotus opens

Its petals to the flatteries of the sun,

So into perfect roundness grew her limbs

And opened up sweet colour, form and light.

Her feet that threw at every step a rose

Upon the earth, like reddened lilies seemed¹

Moving² from spot to spot their petalled bloom;

Her motion studied from the queenly swans

Its³ wanton swaying musically timed

The sweet-voiced anklets' murmurous refrain.

From moulded knee to ankle the supreme

Divinely lessening curve so lovely was,

It looked as if on this alone were spent

All her Creator's cunning and well the rest

Might tax his labour to build half such grace,

Yet was that miracle accomplished. Soft

¹ Her feet limned a red rose at every step

  On the enamoured earth; like magic flowers

² They moved      ³ With 

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In roundness, warm in their smooth sweep her thighs

Were without parallel in Nature's work.

The greatness of her hips on which life's girdle

Had found its ample rest deserved already

The lap of divine love where she alone

Might hope one day embosomed by god to lie.

Deep was her navel's hollow where wound in

Above her¹ raiment's knot that tender line

Of down as slight as the dark ray shot up

From the blue jewel central in her zone.

Her waist was like an altar's middle small

And there the triple stair of love was built.

Twin breasts large, lovely pale with darkened paps

That could not allow the slender lotus thread

A passage, on whose either side there waited

Softer than delicatest flowers the arms

Which Love victorious in defeat would find

His chains to bind down the Eternal's neck.

Her throat adorned the necklace which it wore;

Its sweep and undulation to the breast

Outmatched the gleaming roundness of its gems.

Above all this her marvellous face where met

The golden mother of beauty and delight

At once the graces of her lotus throne

And the soft lashes of the moon. The smile

Parting the rosy sweetness of her lips

Like a white flower across a ruddy leaf

Or pearls that sever lines of coral. Noble

Her speech dropped nectar from a liquid voice

To which the coïl’s call seemed rude and harsh

And sob of smitten lyres a tuneless sound.

She had exchanged with the wild woodland deer

The startled glance of her long lovely eyes

Fluttering like a blue lotus in the wind.

The pencilled long line of her arching brows

Made vain the beauty of Love's bow. Her hair's

Tossed masses put voluptuously to shame

' Passing the 

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