The Birth of the War-God 

canto one : third rendering

A God concealed in mountain majesty,

Embodied to our cloudy physical sight

In dizzy summits and green-gloried slopes,

Measuring the earth in an enormous ease,

Immense Himaloy dwells and in the moan

Of western waters and in eastern floods

Plunges his hidden spurs. Such is his strength¹

High-piled or thousand-crested is his look

That with the scaling greatness of his peaks

He seems to uplift to heaven our prostrate soil.

He mounts from the green luxury of his vales,

Ambitious of the skies; naked and lost

The virgin chill immensity of snow

Covers the breathless spirit of his heights.

To snows his savage pines aspire; the birch

And all the hardy brotherhood which climb

Against the angry muttering of the winds,

Challenge the dangerous air in which they h've.

He is sated with the silence of the stars:

Lower he dips into life's beauty, far

Below he hears the cascades, now he clothes

His rugged sides the gentle breezes kiss

With soft grass and the gold and silver fern.

Holding upon her breast the hill-god's feet

Earth in her tresses hides his giant knees.

Over lakes of mighty sleep, where fountains lapse,

Dreaming, and by the noise of waterfalls,

In an unspoken solitary joy

He listens to her chant. The distant hills

Imagined him the calf to which she lows

When the wideness milks her udders and (Meru is near

The heavenly unseen height; like visible hints

Of his great subtle growths of peace and joy

' Of such a strength 

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His dreaming woods arise;) gems brilliant-rayed

She yields and herbs on every mountain marge.

He gives his colours to the Apsara's grace.

The smooth gold of her limbs with harder hues

Stolen from his mineral rocks she loves to stain.

Reflections of those brilliant colourings

Oft on the hangings of the cloudy heavens

Like an untimely sunset's glories lie.¹

In such warm infinite riches is he dressed

His fire of life from his cold heights of thought

The great snows cannot slay its opulence.

Though stark they chill the feet of heaven, her sons

Forgive the fault amid a throng of joys

As faints from our charmed sense in luminous floods

The gloomy mark² on the moon's argent disk,

They have forgot his chill severity

In sweetness which escapes from him in life.

For as from passion of some austere soul

Delight and love have stolen to rapturous birth,

From ice-born waters his delicious vales

Are fed. Indulgent like the smile of God,

White grandeurs overlook wild green romance.

He keeps his summits for immortal steps,

The life of man upon his happy slopes

Roams wild and bare and free, the life of gods

Prone from the unattainable summits climbs

Down the rude greatness of his huge rock-park

As if rejecting the glory of its veils

It peeps out from the subtle gleam of air,

Visible to man by waterfall and glade,

And finds us in the hush of sleeping woods,

And meets us with low whisperings in the night  

¹ The glamoured splendour of his mineral rocks

  Reflecting all its brilliant colourings

  Upon the hangings of the cloudy heavens

  Like an untimely sunset's glories sleeps.

        ² stain 

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Of their surrounding presence unaware.

Chasing the dreadful wanderers of the hill

The hunter seeks for traces on his side,

He, though soft-falling innocent snows weep off

The cruelty of their red footprints, finds

The path his prey the mighty lions go.

For glittering pearls from the felled elephants

Lain clotted, dropping from the hollow claws

Betray¹ their dangerous passage. When he sits

Tired of the hunt on a slain poplar's base

And bares to winds the weariness of his brow

They come fay-breezes dancing on the slopes,

Scattering the peacock's gorgeous-plumed attire,

Shaking the cedars on Himaloy's breast,

With spray from Ganges' cascades on their wings,

To kiss² the wind-blown tangles of his hair,

Sprinkling their coolness on his soul. He has made

The grottoed glens his chambers of desire,

He has packed their dumbness with his passionate bliss;

Stone witnesses of ecstasy they sleep.

And wonderful luminous herbs from night's dim banks

Give light to see the joy those thrilled rocks keep

When the strong forest-wanderer is lain

Twined with his love, marrying with hers his sighs,

Moved to desire in their stony dreams.

Nor only human footsteps tread the grass

Upon his slopes, nor only mortal love

Finds there the lovely setting of the hills

Amid the broken caverns and the trees,

In the weird moonlight pouring from the clouds

And the clear sunlight glancing from the pines

A wandering choir, a flash of unseen forms,

Go sweeping sometimes they and leave our hearts

Startled with hintings of some greater life,

The Kinnar passes singing in his glades.

Then stirred to repeat the echoes of their voice,³

'recall      ² They drive

³ Then stirred to keep some sweetness of their voice, 

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He fills the hollows of his bamboo stems

With the wind sobbing from the deep ravines

And in a moaning and melodious sound

Breathes from his rocky mouths, as if he meant

To flute, tune-giver to wild minstrelsies.

The delicate heels of the maned Kinnari

Are with his frosted slabs of snow distressed.

But with the large load of her breasts and hips

To escape the biting pathway's chill unease

She is forbidden: she must not break the grace

Of her slow¹ motion's tardy rich appeal.

She too in grottoed caverns lies embraced,

Forced from the shame-fast sweetness of her limbs

The subtle raiment leaves her fainting hands

To give her tremulous beauty to the gaze

Of her eternal lover. But thick clouds

Stoop hastily bowed to the rocky doors

And hang chance curtains against mortal eyes,

Shielding the naked goddess from our sight.

The birch-leaves of his hills love-pages are.

In ink of liquid metals letters strange

We see make crimson signs; they lie in wait

Upon the slopes, pages where passion burns,

The flushed epistles of enamoured gods

Where divine Circes pen heart-moving things.

The Apsaras rhyme out their wayward dance,

The smooth gold of their limbs by harder hues

Of minerals stained, attracting seize

The curious fancy in love's straying eyes.

When far down the clouds droop to his girdle waist

Holding the tearful burden of their hearts,

Drifting grey melancholy through the skies,²

There by the low-hung plateaus' wideness lain

The siddhas in soft shade repose, or flee

Soon up chased by wild driving rain for refuge

To summits splendid in the veilless sun.

Earth's mighty animal life has reached his woods.

¹ dumb    ² air, 

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The lion on Himaloy keeps his lair,

The elephant herds there wander. Oozing trees

Wounded by stormy rubbings of the tuskers' brows

Loose down their odorous tears in creamy drops,

And winds upon the plateau burdened pant

Weaving the air into a scented dream.

The yaks are there; they lift their bushy tails

To lash the breeze and scatter gleamings white:

With candour casting snares for heart and eye

The moonbeams lie upon the sleeping hills.

Like souls divine who in a sweet excess

All-clasping draw their fallen enemies

Into¹ the impartial refuge of their love

Out of the ordered cruelties of life,

He takes into his cavern bosom hunted night.

Afraid of heaven's radiant eyes, crouched up,

She cowers in Nature's great subliminal gloom,

A trembling fugitive from the ardent day,

Lest one embrace should change her into light.

Himaloy's peaks outpeer the circling sun.

He with his upstretched brilliant hands awakes

Immortal lilies in the unreached tarns,

Morning has found miraculous blooms unculled

By the seven sages in their starry march.

Such are the grandeurs of Himaloy's soul,

Such are his divine moods; moonlit he bears,

Of godward symbols the exalted source,

The mystic Soma-plant upon his heights.

He by the Father of sacrifice climbs crowned,

Headman and dynast of earth's soaring hills.

These were the scenes in which the Lovers met.

here lonely mused the silent Soul of all,

And to awake him from his boundless trance

Took woman's form the beauty of the world;

Then infinite sweetness bore a living shape;

She made her body perfect for his arms.

¹'To 

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With equal rites he to his giant bed

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

Mena, a goddess of devising heart,

Whom for her wisdom brooding seers adored,

The shapers of all living images,

He sought, Mena named. They knew him for the peer

Of Meru, their sublime celestial home,

They gave him one, their thought's sweet-visioned pride,

Whose womb made steadfast like himself his race.

Their joys of love were like themselves immense,

Then in the wide felicitous lapse of time

The happy tumult of her being tossed

In long and puissant ecstasies 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,

Race of a cavernous and monstrous world,

With strange eyes gleaming past the glaucous wave,

And jewelled tresses glittering through the foam.

Not that his natural air who great had grown

Amid the brilliant perils of the sun,

From Indra tearing the great mountains' wings

With which they soared against the threatened sky,

Below the slippery fields the fugitive sank,

His sheltered essence bore no cruel sign,

Nor felt the anguish of the heavenly scars.

They disappointed of that first¹ desire

Mixed in a greater² joy. It took not earth

For narrow base, but forced the heavens down

Into their passion-trance clasped on the couch

Calm and stupendous of the snow-cold heights.

Then to a nobler load her womb gave place.

For Daksha's daughter, Shiva's wife, had left

Her body lifeless in her father's hall

In that proud sacrifice and fatal, she

The undivided mother infinite,

¹ former                  ² larger 

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Indignant for his severing thought of God.

Now in a trance profound of joy by her

Conceived she sprang again to a livelier birth

To heal the sorrow and the dumb divorce.

Out of the unseen soul the splendid child

Came like bright lightning from the invisible air,

Welcome as Fortune to an earthly king

When she is born with daring for her sire

And for her mother policy sublime.

Then was their festival holiday in the world,

Then were the regions subtle with delight:

Heaven's shells blew sweetly through the stainless air

And flowery rain came drifting down; Earth thrilled

Back ravished to the rapture of the skies,

And all her moving and unmoving life

Felt happiness because the Bride was born.

So that fair mother by this daughter shone,

So her young beauty radiated its beams

As might a land of lapis lazuli

Torn by the thunder's voice. As from the earth

Tender and green an infant lance of life,

A jewelled sprouting from the mother slab

The divine child lay .on her mother's breast.

They called her Parvati, the mountain child,

When love to love cried answer in the house

And to the sound she turned her lovely face.

A riper day the great maternal name

Of Uma brought. Her father banqueted

Upon her as she grew his sateless¹ eyes,

Who saw his life like a large lamp by her

Fulfilled in light; like Heaven's silent path

By Ganges voiceful grown his soul rejoiced;

It flowered like a great and shapeless thought

Suddenly immortal in a perfect word.

Wherever her bright laughing body rolled,

Wherever faltered her sweet tumbling steps,

All eyes were drawn to her like winging bees

' unsated

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