Appendix Poems in Greek and in French Greek Epigram Lorsque rien n'existait Sur les grands sommets blancs Note on the Texts Index of Titles Index of First Lines

Night by the Sea

Love, a moment drop thy hands;

Night within my soul expands.

Veil thy beauties milk-rose-fair

In that dark and showering hair.

Coral kisses ravish not

When the soul is tinged with thought;

Burning looks are then forbid.

Let each shyly-parted lid

Hover like a settling dove

O'er those deep-blue wells of Love.

Darkness brightens; silvering flee

Pomps of foam the driven sea.

In this garden's dim repose

Lighted with the burning rose,

Soft narcissi's golden camp

Glimmering or with rosier lamp

Censered honeysuckle guessed

By the fragrance of her breast, —

Here where summer's hands have crowned

Silence in the fields of sound,

Here felicity should be.

Hearken, Edith, to the sea.

What a voice of grief intrudes

On these happy solitudes!

To the wind that with him dwells

Ocean, old historian, tells

All the dreadful heart of tears

Hidden in the pleasant years.

Summer's children, what do ye

By the stern and cheerless sea?

Not we first nor we alone

Heard the mighty Ocean moan

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By this treasure-house of flowers

In the sweet ambiguous hours.

Many a girl's lips ruby-red

With their vernal honey fed

Happy mouths, and soft cheeks flushed

With Love's rosy sunlight blushed.

Ruddy lips of many a boy

Blithe discovered hills of joy

Ruby-guided through a kiss

To the sweet highways of bliss.

Here they saw the evening still

Coming slowly from the hill

And the patient stars arise

To their outposts in the skies;

Heard the ocean shoreward urge

The speed and thunder of his surge,

Singing heard as though a bee

Noontide waters on the sea.

These no longer. For our rose

In her place they wreathed once, blows,

And thy glorious garland, sweet,

Kissed not once those wandering feet.

All the lights of spring are ended,

To the wintry haven wended.

Beauty's boons and nectarous leisure,

Lips, the honeycombs of pleasure,

Cheeks enrosed, Love's natal soil,

Breasts, the ardent conqueror's spoil,

Spring rejects; a lovelier child

His brittle fancies has beguiled.

O her name that to repeat

Than the Dorian muse more sweet

Could the white hand more relume

Writing and refresh the bloom

Of lips that used such syllables then,

Dies unloved by later men.

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Are we more than summer flowers?

Shall a longer date be ours,

Rose and springtime, youth and we

By the everlasting sea?

Are they blown as legends tell

In the smoke and gurge of hell?

Writhe they in relucent gyres

O'er a circle sad of fires?

In what lightless groves must they

Or unmurmuring alleys stray?

Fields no sunlight visits, streams

Where no happy lotus gleams?

Yet, where'er their steps below,

Memories sweet for comrades go.

Lethe's waters had their will,

But the soul remembers still.

Beauty pays her boon of breath

To thy narrow credit, Death,

Leaving a brief perfume; we

Perish also by the sea.

We shall lose, ah me! too soon

Lose the clear and silent moon,

The serenities of night

And the deeper evening light.

We shall know not when the morn

In the widening East is born,

Never feel the west-wind stir,

Spring's delightful messenger,

Never under branches lain

Dally with the sweet-lipped rain,

Watch the moments of the tree,

Nor know the sounds that tread the sea.

With thy kisses chase this gloom: —

Thoughts, the children of the tomb.

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Kiss me, Edith. Soon the night

Comes and hides the happy light.

Nature's vernal darlings dead

From new founts of life are fed.

Dawn relumes the immortal skies.

Ah! what boon for earth-closed eyes?

Love's sweet debts are standing, sweet;

Honied payment to complete

Haste — a million is to pay —

Lest too soon the allotted day

End and we oblivious keep

Darkness and eternal sleep.

See! the moon from heaven falls.

In thy bosom's snow-white walls

Softly and supremely housed

Shut my heart up; keep it closed

Like a rose of Indian grain,

Like that rose against the rain,

Closed to all that life applauds,

Nature's perishable gauds,

And the airs that burdened be

With such thoughts as shake the sea.

The Lover's Complaint

O plaintive, murmuring reed, begin thy strain;

Unloose that heavenly tongue,

Interpreter divine of pain;

Utter thy voice, the sister of my song.

Thee in the silver waters growing,

Arcadian Pan, strange whispers blowing

Into thy delicate stops, did teach

A language lovelier than speech.

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O plaintive, murmuring reed, begin thy strain;

O plaintive, murmuring reed.

Nisa to Mopsus is decreed,

The moonwhite Nisa to a swarthy swain.

What love-gift now shall Hope not bring?

Election dwells no more with beauty's king.

The wild weed now has wed the rose,

Now ivy on the bramble grows;

Too happy lover, fill the lamp of bliss!

Too happy lover, drunk with Nisa's kiss!

For thee pale Cynthia leaves her golden car,

For thee from Tempe stoops the white and evening star.

O plaintive, murmuring reed, renew thy strain;

O solace anguish yet again.

I thought Love soft as velvet sleep,

Sweeter than dews nocturnal breezes weep,

Cool as water in a murmuring pass

And shy as violets in the vernal grass,

But hard as Nisa's heart is he

And salt as the unharvestable sea.

O plaintive, murmuring reed, renew thy strain.

One morn she came; her mouth

Breathing the odours of the south,

With happy eyes and heaving bosom fain.

She asked for fruit long-stored in autumn's hold.

These gave I; from the branch dislodged I threw

Sweet-hearted apples in their age of gold

And pears divine for taste and hue.

And one I saw, should all the rest excel;

But error led my plucking hand astray

And with a sudden sweet dismay

My heart into her apron fell.

O plaintive, murmuring reed, renew thy strain.

My bleeding heart awhile

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She kept and bloomed upon its pain,

Then slighted as a broken thing and vile.

Now Mopsus in his unblest arms,

Mopsus enfolds her heavenlier charms,

Mopsus to whom the Muse averse

Refused her gracious secrets to rehearse.

O plaintive, murmuring reed, breathe yet thy strain.

Ye glades, your bliss I grudge you not,

Nor would I that my grief profane

Your sacred summer with intruding thought.

Yet since I will no more behold

Your glorious beauty stained with gold

From shadows of her hair, nor by some well

Made naked of their sylvan dress

The breasts, the limbs I never shall possess,

Therefore, O mother Arethuse, farewell.

For me no place abides

By the green verge of thy beloved tides.

To Lethe let my footsteps go

And wailing waters in the realms below,

Where happier song is none than moaning pain

Nor any lovelier Syrinx than the weed.

Child of the lisping waters, hush thy strain,

O murmuring, plaintive reed.

Love in Sorrow

Do you remember, Love, that sunset pale

When from near meadows sad with mist the breeze

Sighed like a feverous soul and with soft wail

The ghostly river sobbed among the trees?

I think that Nature heard our misery

Weep to itself and wept for sympathy.

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For we were strangers then; we knew not Fate

In ambush by the solitary stream

Nor did our sorrows hope to find a mate,

Much less of love or friendship dared we dream.

Rather we thought that loneliness and we

Were wed in marble perpetuity.

For there was none who loved me, no, not one.

Alas, what was there that a man should love?

For I was misery's last and frailest son

And even my mother bade me homeless rove.

And I had wronged my youth and nobler powers

By weak attempts, small failures, wasted hours.

Therefore I laid my cheek on the chill grass

And murmured, "I am overborne with grief

And joy to richer natures hopes to pass.

Oh me! my life is like an aspen leaf

That shakes but will not fall. My thoughts are blind

And life so bitter that death seems almost kind.

"How am I weary of the days' increase,

Of the moon's brightness and the splendid stars,

The sun that dies not. I would be at peace,

Nor blind my soul with images, nor force

My lips to mirth whose later taste is death,

Nor with vain utterance load my weary breath."

Thus murmured I aloud nor deemed I spoke

To human ears, but you were hidden, sweet,

Behind the willows when my plaining broke

Upon your lonely muse. Ah kindly feet

That brushed the grass in tender haste to bind

Another's wounds, you were less wise than kind.

You said, "My brother, lift your forlorn eyes;

I am your sister more than you unblest."

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I looked upon your face, the book of sighs

And index to incurable unrest.

I rose and kissed you, sweet. Your lips were warm

And drew my heart out like a witch's charm.

We parted where the sacred spires arose

In silent power above the silent street.

I saw you mid the rose-trees, O white rose,

Linger a moment, then the dusk defeat

My eyes, and, listening, heard your footsteps fade

On the sad leaves of the autumnal glade.

And were you happy, sweet? In me I know —

For either in my blood the autumn sang

His own pale requiem or that new sweet glow

Failed in the light of bitter knowledge — rang

A voice that said, "Behold the loves too pure

To live, the joy that never shall endure."

This too I know, nor is my hope so bright

But that it sees its autumn cold and sere

Attending with a pale and solemn light

Beyond the gardens of the vernal year.

Yet will I not my weary heart constrain

But take you, sweet, and sweet surcease from pain.

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

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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.

Estelle

Why do thy lucid eyes survey,

Estelle, their sisters in the milky way?

The blue heavens cannot see

Thy beauty nor the planets praise.

Blindly they walk their old accustomed ways.

Turn hither for felicity.

My body's earth thy vernal power declares,

My spirit is a heaven of thousand stars,

And all these lights are thine and open doors on thee.

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Radha's Complaint in Absence

(Imitated from the Bengali of Chundidas)

O heart, my heart, a heavy pain is thine!

What land is that where none doth know

Love's cruel name nor any word of sin?

My heart, there let us go.

Friend of my soul, who then has called love sweet?

Laughing I called from heavenly spheres

The sweet love close; he came with flying feet

And turned my life to tears.

What highborn girl, exiling virgin pride,

Has wooed love to her with a laugh?

His fires shall burn her as in harvest-tide

The mowers burn the chaff.

O heart, my heart, merry thy sweet youth ran

In fields where no love was; thy breath

Is anguish, since his cruel reign began.

What other cure but death?

Radha's Appeal

(Imitated from the Bengali of Chundidas)

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.

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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.

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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.

Bankim 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 softly-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 honied looks.

O master of delicious words! the bloom

Of chompuk 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

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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.

Madhusudan Dutt

Poet, who first with skill inspired did teach

Greatness to our divine Bengali speech, —

Divine, but rather with delightful moan

Spring's golden mother makes when twin-alone

She lies with golden Love and heaven's birds

Call hymeneal with enchanting words

Over their passionate faces, rather these

Than with the calm and grandiose melodies

(Such calm as consciousness of godhead owns)

The high gods speak upon their ivory thrones

Sitting in council high, — till taught by thee

Fragrance and noise of the world-shaking sea.

Thus do they praise thee who amazed espy

Thy winged epic and hear the arrows cry

And journeyings of alarmed gods; and due

The praise, since with great verse and numbers new

Thou mad'st her godlike who was only fair.

And yet my heart more perfectly ensnare

Thy soft impassioned flutes and more thy Muse

To wander in the honied months doth choose

Than courts of kings, with Sita in the grove

Of happy blossoms, (O musical voice of love

Murmuring sweet words with sweeter sobs between!)

With Shoorpa in the Vindhyan forests green

Laying her wonderful heart upon the sod

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Made holy by the well-loved feet that trod

Its vocal shades; and more unearthly bright

Thy jewelled songs made of relucent light

Wherein the birds of spring and summer and all flowers

And murmuring waters flow, her widowed hours

Making melodious who divinely loved.

No human hands such notes ambrosial moved;

These accents are not of the imperfect earth;

Rather the god was voiceful in their birth,

The god himself of the enchanting flute,

The god himself took up thy pen and wrote.

To the Cuckoo

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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Envoi

Ite hinc, Camenae, vos quoque ite jam, sane

Dulces Camenae, nam fatebimur verum

Dulces fuistis, et tamen meas chartas

Revisitote sed pudenter et raro.

Pale poems, weak and few, who vainly use

Your wings towards the unattainable spheres,

Offspring of the divine Hellenic Muse,

Poor maimed children born of six disastrous years!

Not as your mother's is your wounded grace,

Since not to me with equal love returned

The hope which drew me to that serene face

Wherein no unreposeful light of effort burned.

Depart and live for seasons many or few

If live you may, but stay not here to pain

My heart with hopeless passion and renew

Visions of beauty that my lips shall ne'er attain.

For in Sicilian olive-groves no more

Or seldom must my footprints now be seen,

Nor tread Athenian lanes, nor yet explore

Parnassus or thy voiceful shores, O Hippocrene.

Me from her lotus heaven Saraswati

Has called to regions of eternal snow

And Ganges pacing to the southern sea,

Ganges upon whose shores the flowers of Eden blow.

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