ON PRIDE AND HEROISM

 

Lion-Heart

 

The maned lion, first of kingly names,

           Magnanimous and famed, though worn with age,

           Wasted with hunger, blunted his keen edge –

         And low the splendid spirit in him flames,

                   Not therefore will with wretched grass assuage

         His famished pangs as graze the deer and bull.

            Rather his dying breath collects desire,

         Leaping once more from shattered brows to pull

            Of the great tusked elephants mad with ire

         His sovereign banquet fierce and masterful.

 

The Way of the Lion

 

The dog with a poor bone is satisfied,

Meatless, with bits of fat and sinew greased,

Nor is his hunger with such remnants eased.

Not so the kingly lion in his pride!

He lets the jackal go grazed by his claw

And slays the tusked kings. Such Nature’s law;

Each being pitches his high appetite

At even with his courage and his might.

 

A Contrast

 

The dog may servile fawn upon the hand

That feeds him, with his tail at wag, nor pain

In crouching and his abject rollings bland

With upward face and belly all in vain:

The elephant to countless flatteries

Returns a quiet look in steadfast eyes.

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The Wheel of Life

 

            The world goes round and, as returns the wheel,

                       All things that die must yet again be born:

             His birth is birth indeed by whose return

                       His race and country grandeur’s summits scale. 

 

Aut Caesar aut Nullus

 

     Two fates alone strong haughty minds endure,

                   Of worth convinced; — on the world’s forehead proud

              Singly to bloom exalted o’er the crowd,

            Or wither in the wilderness obscure. 

 

Magnanimity

 

My brother, exalt thyself though in o’erthrow!

     Five noble planets through these spaces roll,

Jupiter is of them; — not on these he leaps,

Rahu,¹ the immortal demon of eclipse,

In his high magnanimity of soul.

 

Smit with God’s thunders only his head he keeps,

Yet seizes in his brief and gloomy hour

Of vengeance the great luminous kings of heaven,

            Day’s Lord and the light to whom night’s soul is given;

                        He scorns to strive with things of lesser power.

 

¹ Rahu, the Titan, stole or seized part of the nectar which rose from the world-ocean at the churning by the Gods and Titans and was appropriated by the Gods. For this violence he was smitten in two by the discus of Vishnu; but as he had drunk the nectar, he remains immortal and seeks always to revenge himself by swallowing the Sun and Moon who had detected his theft, The Tortoise mentioned in the next epigram upheld the mountain Mandar, which was the stick of the churning. The Great Snake, Ananta, was the rope of the churning, he on whose hood the earth now rests.          

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The Motion of Giants

 

On his wide hood as on a painted shield

Bears up the ranged worlds. Infinite, the Snake;

Him in the giant midmost of his back

The eternal Tortoise brooks, whom the great field

Of vague and travelling waters ceaselessly

Encompass with the proud unfathomed sea.

0 easy mights and marvellous of the great,

Whose simplest action is yet vast with fate!

 

Maiank

 

O child of the immortal mountains hoar,

Mainak,¹ far better had this been to bear

The bleeding wings that furious Indra. tore,

The thunder’s scars that with disastrous roar

Vomiting lightnings made the heavens one flare,—

Not, not this refuge in the cool wide sea

While all thy suffering people cried to thee.

 

Noble Resentment

 

                      The crystal hath no sense disgrace to know,

               Yet blazes angry when the sun’s feet rouse;

                 Shall man the high-spirited, the orgulous,

                        Brook insult vile from fellow or from foe ?

 

¹ The mountains had formerly wings and could move about, — to the great inconveni­ence of everybody: Indra, attacked by them, smote off their wings with the thunderbolt. Mainak, son of Himalay, took refuge in the sea.

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Age and Genius

 

Nature, not age is the high spirit’s cause

That burns in mighty hearts and genius high.

Lo, on the rutting elephant’s tusked jaws

The infant lion leaps invincibly. 

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