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

Love and Death

Love and Death

In woodlands of the bright and early world,

When love was to himself yet new and warm

And stainless, played like morning with a flower

Ruru with his young bride Priyumvada.

Fresh-cheeked and dew-eyed white Priyumvada

Opened her budded heart of crimson bloom

To love, to Ruru; Ruru, a happy flood

Of passion round a lotus dancing thrilled,

Blinded with his soul's waves Priyumvada.

To him the earth was a bed for this sole flower,

To her all the world was filled with his embrace.

Wet with new rains the morning earth, released

From her fierce centuries and burning suns,

Lavished her breath in greenness; poignant flowers

Thronged all her eager breast, and her young arms

Cradled a childlike bounding life that played

And would not cease, nor ever weary grew

Of her bright promise; for all was joy and breeze

And perfume, colour and bloom and ardent rays

Of living, and delight desired the world.

Then Earth was quick and pregnant tamelessly;

A free and unwalled race possessed her plains

Whose hearts uncramped by bonds, whose unspoiled thoughts

At once replied to light. Foisoned the fields;

Lonely and rich the forests and the swaying

Of those unnumbered tops affected men

With thoughts to their vast music kin. Undammed

The virgin rivers moved towards the sea,

And mountains yet unseen and peoples vague

Winged young imagination like an eagle

To strange beauty remote. And Ruru felt

The sweetness of the early earth as sap

All through him, and short life an aeon made

By boundless possibility, and love,

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Sweetest of all unfathomable love,

A glory untired. As a bright bird comes flying

From airy extravagance to his own home,

And breasts his mate, and feels her all his goal,

So from boon sunlight and the fresh chill wave

Which swirled and lapped between the slumbering fields,

From forest pools and wanderings mid leaves

Through emerald ever-new discoveries,

Mysterious hillsides ranged and buoyant-swift

Races with our wild brothers in the meads,

Came Ruru back to the white-bosomed girl,

Strong-winged to pleasure. She all fresh and new

Rose to him, and he plunged into her charm.

For neither to her honey and poignancy

Artlessly interchanged, nor any limit

To the sweet physical delight of her

He found. Her eyes like deep and infinite wells

Lured his attracted soul, and her touch thrilled

Not lightly, though so light; the joy prolonged

And sweetness of the lingering of her lips

Was every time a nectar of surprise

To her lover; her smooth-gleaming shoulder bared

In darkness of her hair showed jasmine-bright,

While her kissed bosom by rich tumults stirred

Was a moved sea that rocked beneath his heart.

Then when her lips had made him blind, soft siege

Of all her unseen body to his rule

Betrayed the ravishing realm of her white limbs,

An empire for the glory of a God.

He knew not whether he loved most her smile,

Her causeless tears or little angers swift,

Whether held wet against him from the bath

Among her kindred lotuses, her cheeks

Soft to his lips and dangerous happy breasts

That vanquished all his strength with their desire,

Meeting his absence with her sudden face,

Or when the leaf-hid bird at night complained

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Near their wreathed arbour on the moonlit lake,

Sobbing delight out from her heart of bliss,

Or in his clasp of rapture laughing low

Of his close bosom bridal-glad and pleased

With passion and this fiery play of love,

Or breaking off like one who thinks of grief,

Wonderful melancholy in her eyes

Grown liquid and with wayward sorrow large.

Thus he in her found a warm world of sweets,

And lived of ecstasy secure, nor deemed

Any new hour could match that early bliss.

But Love has joys for spirits born divine

More bleeding-lovely than his thornless rose.

That day he had left, while yet the east was dark,

Rising, her bosom and into the river

Swam out, exulting in the sting and swift

Sharp-edged desire around his limbs, and sprang

Wet to the bank, and streamed into the wood.

As a young horse upon the pastures glad

Feels greensward and the wind along his mane

And arches as he goes his neck, so went

In an immense delight of youth the boy

And shook his locks, joy-crested. Boundlessly

He revelled in swift air of life, a creature

Of wide and vigorous morning. Far he strayed

Tempting for flower and fruit branches in heaven,

And plucked, and flung away, and brighter chose,

Seeking comparisons for her bloom; and followed

New streams, and touched new trees, and felt slow beauty

And leafy secret change; for the damp leaves,

Grey-green at first, grew pallid with the light

And warmed with consciousness of sunshine near;

Then the whole daylight wandered in, and made

Hard tracts of splendour, and enriched all hues.

But when a happy sheltered heat he felt

And heard contented voice of living things

Harmonious with the noon, he turned and swiftly

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Went homeward yearning to Priyumvada,

And near his home emerging from green leaves

He laughed towards the sun: "O father Sun,"

He cried, "how good it is to live, to love!

Surely our joy shall never end, nor we

Grow old, but like bright rivers or pure winds

Sweetly continue, or revive with flowers,

Or live at least as long as senseless trees."

He dreamed, and said with a soft smile: "Lo, she!

And she will turn from me with angry tears

Her delicate face more beautiful than storm

Or rainy moonlight. I will follow her,

And soothe her heart with sovereign flatteries;

Or rather all tyranny exhaust and taste

The beauty of her anger like a fruit,

Vexing her soul with helplessness; then soften

Easily with quiet undenied demand

Of heart insisting upon heart; or else

Will reinvest her beauty bright with flowers,

Or with my hands her little feet persuade.

Then will her face be like a sudden dawn,

And flower compelled into reluctant smiles."

He had not ceased when he beheld her. She,

Tearing a jasmine bloom with waiting hands,

Stood drooping, petulant, but heard at once

His footsteps and before she was aware,

A sudden smile of exquisite delight

Leaped to her mouth, and a great blush of joy

Surprised her cheeks. She for a moment stood

Beautiful with her love before she died;

And he laughed towards her. With a pitiful cry

She paled; moaning, her stricken limbs collapsed.

But petrified, in awful dumb surprise,

He gazed; then waking with a bound was by her,

All panic expectation. As he came,

He saw a brilliant flash of coils evade

The sunlight, and with hateful gorgeous hood

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Darted into green safety, hissing, death.

Voiceless he sank beside her and stretched out

His arms and desperately touched her face,

As if to attract her soul to live, and sought

Beseeching with his hands her bosom. O, she

Was warm, and cruel hope pierced him; but pale

As jasmines fading on a girl's sweet breast

Her cheek was, and forgot its perfect rose.

Her eyes that clung to sunlight yet, with pain

Were large and feebly round his neck her arms

She lifted and, desiring his pale cheek

Against her bosom, sobbed out piteously,

"Ah, love!" and stopped heart-broken; then, "O Love!

Alas the green dear home that I must leave

So early! I was so glad of love and kisses,

And thought that centuries would not exhaust

The deep embrace. And I have had so little

Of joy and the wild day and throbbing night,

Laughter, and tenderness, and strife and tears.

I have not numbered half the brilliant birds

In one green forest, nor am familiar grown

With sunrise and the progress of the eves,

Nor have with plaintive cries of birds made friends,

Cuckoo and rainlark and love-speak-to-me.

I have not learned the names of half the flowers

Around me; so few trees know me by my name;

Nor have I seen the stars so very often

That I should die. I feel a dreadful hand

Drawing me from the touch of thy warm limbs

Into some cold vague mist, and all black night

Descends towards me. I no more am thine,

But go I know not where, and see pale shapes

And gloomy countries and that terrible stream.

O Love, O Love, they take me from thee far,

And whether we shall find each other ever

In the wide dreadful territory of death,

I know not. Or thou wilt forget me quite,

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And life compel thee into other arms.

Ah, come with me! I cannot bear to wander

In that cold cruel country all alone,

Helpless and terrified, or sob by streams

Denied sweet sunlight and by thee unloved."

Slower her voice came now, and over her cheek

Death paused; then, sobbing like a little child

Too early from her bounding pleasures called,

The lovely discontented spirit stole

From her warm body white. Over her leaned

Ruru, and waited for dead lips to move.

Still in the greenwood lay Priyumvada,

And Ruru rose not from her, but with eyes

Emptied of glory hung above his dead,

Only, without a word, without a tear.

Then the crowned wives of the great forest came,

They who had fed her from maternal breasts,

And grieved over the lovely body cold,

And bore it from him; nor did he entreat

One last look nor one kiss, nor yet denied

What he had loved so well. They the dead girl

Into some distant greenness bore away.

But Ruru, while the stillness of the place

Remembered her, sat without voice. He heard

Through the great silence that was now his soul,

The forest sounds, a squirrel's leap through leaves,

The cheeping of a bird just overhead,

A peacock with his melancholy cry

Complaining far away, and tossings dim

And slight unnoticeable stir of trees.

But all these were to him like distant things

And he alone in his heart's void. And yet

No thought he had of her so lately lost.

Rather far pictures, trivial incidents

Of that old life before her delicate face

Had lived for him, dumbly distinct like thoughts

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Of men that die, kept with long pomps his mind

Excluding the dead girl. So still he was,

The birds flashed by him with their swift small wings,

Fanning him. Then he moved, then rigorous

Memory through all his body shuddering

Awoke, and he looked up and knew the place,

And recognised greenness immutable,

And saw old trees and the same flowers still bloom.

He felt the bright indifference of earth

And all the lonely uselessness of pain.

Then lifting up the beauty of his brow

He spoke, with sorrow pale: "O grim cold Death!

But I will not like ordinary men

Satiate thee with cries, and falsely woo thee,

And make my grief thy theatre, who lie

Prostrate beneath thy thunderbolts and make

Night witness of their moans, shuddering and crying

When sudden memories pierce them like swords,

And often starting up as at a thought

Intolerable, pace a little, then

Sink down exhausted by brief agony.

O secrecy terrific, darkness vast,

At which we shudder! Somewhere, I know not where,

Somehow, I know not how, I shall confront

Thy gloom, tremendous spirit, and seize with hands

And prove what thou art and what man." He said,

And slowly to the forest wandered. There

Long months he travelled between grief and grief,

Reliving thoughts of her with every pace,

Measuring vast pain in his immortal mind.

And his heart cried in him as when a fire

Roars through wide forests and the branches cry

Burning towards heaven in torture glorious.

So burned, immense, his grief within him; he raised

His young pure face all solemnised with pain,

Voiceless. Then Fate was shaken, and the Gods

Grieved for him, of his silence grown afraid.

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Therefore from peaks divine came flashing down

Immortal Agni and to the uswutth-tree

Cried in the Voice that slays the world: "O tree

That liftest thy enormous branches able

To shelter armies, more than armies now

Shelter, be famous, house a brilliant God.

For the grief grows in Ruru's breast up-piled,

As wrestles with its anguished barricades

In silence an impending flood, and Gods

Immortal grow afraid. For earth alarmed

Shudders to bear the curse lest her young life

Pale with eclipse and all-creating love

Be to mere pain condemned. Divert the wrath

Into thy boughs, Uswuttha — thou shalt be

My throne — glorious, though in eternal pangs,

Yet worth much pain to harbour divine fire."

So ended the young pure destroyer's voice,

And the dumb god consented silently.

In the same noon came Ruru; his mind had paused,

Lured for a moment by soft wandering gleams

Into forgetfulness of grief; for thoughts

Gentle and near-eyed whispering memories

So sweetly came, his blind heart dreamed she lived.

Slow the uswuttha-tree bent down its leaves,

And smote his cheek, and touched his heavy hair.

And Ruru turned illumined. For a moment,

One blissful moment he had felt 'twas she.

So had she often stolen up and touched

His curls with her enamoured fingers small,

Lingering, while the wind smote him with her hair

And her quick breath came to him like spring. Then he,

Turning, as one surprised with heaven, saw

Ready to his swift passionate grasp her bosom

And body sweet expecting his embrace.

Oh, now saw her not, but the guilty tree

Shrinking; then grief back with a double crown

Arose and stained his face with agony.

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Nor silence he endured, but the dumb force

Ascetic and inherited, by sires

Fierce-musing earned, from the boy's bosom blazed.

"O uswutth-tree, wantonly who hast mocked

My anguish with the wind, but thou no more

Have joy of the cool wind nor green delight,

But live thy guilty leaves in fire, so long

As Aryan wheels by thy doomed shadow vast

Thunder to war, nor bless with cool wide waves

Lyric Saruswathi nations impure."

He spoke, and the vast tree groaned through its leaves,

Recognising its fate; then smouldered; lines

Of living fire rushed up the girth and hissed

Serpentine in the unconsuming leaves;

Last, all Hutashan in his chariot armed

Sprang on the boughs and blazed into the sky,

And wailing all the great tormented creature

Stood wide in agony; one half was green

And earthly, the other a weird brilliance

Filled with the speed and cry of endless flame.

But he, with the fierce rushing-out of power

Shaken and that strong grasp of anguish, flung

His hands out to the sun; "Priyumvada!"

He cried, and at that well-loved sound there dawned

With overwhelming sweetness miserable

Upon his mind the old delightful times

When he had called her by her liquid name,

Where the voice loved to linger. He remembered

The chompuc bushes where she turned away

Half-angered, and his speaking of her name

Masterfully as to a lovely slave

Rebellious who has erred; at that the slow

Yielding of her small head, and after a little

Her sliding towards him and beautiful

Propitiating body as she sank down

With timid graspings deprecatingly

In prostrate warm surrender, her flushed cheeks

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Upon his feet and little touches soft;

Or her long name uttered beseechingly,

And the swift leap of all her body to him,

And eyes of large repentance, and the weight

Of her wild bosom and lips unsatisfied;

Or hourly call for little trivial needs,

Or sweet unneeded wanton summoning,

Daily appeal that never staled nor lost

Its sudden music, and her lovely speed,

Sedulous occupation left, quick-breathing,

With great glad eyes and eager parted lips;

Or in deep quiet moments murmuring

That name like a religion in her ear,

And her calm look compelled to ecstasy;

Or to the river luring her, or breathed

Over her dainty slumber, or secret sweet

Bridal outpantings of her broken name.

All these as rush unintermitting waves

Upon a swimmer overborne, broke on him

Relentless, things too happy to be endured,

Till faint with the recalled felicity

Low he moaned out: "O pale Priyumvada!

O dead fair flower! yet living to my grief!

But I could only slay the innocent tree,

Powerless when power should have been. Not such

Was Bhrigu from whose sacred strength I spring,

Nor Bhrigu's son, my father, when he blazed

Out from Puloma's side, and burning, blind,

Fell like a tree the ravisher unjust.

But I degenerate from such sires. O Death

That showest not thy face beneath the stars,

But comest masked, and on our dear ones seizing

Fearest to wrestle equally with love!

Nor from thy gloomy house any come back

To tell thy way. But O, if any strength

In lover's constancy to torture dwell

Earthward to force a helping god and such

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Ascetic force be born of lover's pain,

Let my dumb pangs be heard. Whoe'er thou art,

O thou bright enemy of Death, descend

And lead me to that portal dim. For I

Have burned in fires cruel as the fire

And lain upon a sharper couch than swords."

He ceased, and heaven thrilled, and the far blue

Quivered as with invisible downward wings.

But Ruru passioned on, and came with eve

To secret grass and a green opening moist

In a cool lustre. Leaned upon a tree

That bathed in faery air and saw the sky

Through branches, and a single parrot loud

Screamed from its top, there stood a golden boy,

Half-naked, with bright limbs all beautiful —

Delicate they were, in sweetness absolute:

For every gleam and every soft strong curve

Magically compelled the eye, and smote

The heart to weakness. In his hands he swung

A bow — not such as human archers use:

For the string moved and murmured like many bees,

And nameless fragrance made the casual air

A peril. He on Ruru that fair face

Turned, and his steps with lovely gesture chained.

"Who art thou here, in forests wandering,

And thy young exquisite face is solemnised

With pain? Luxuriously the Gods have tortured

Thy heart to see such dreadful glorious beauty

Agonise in thy lips and brilliant eyes:

As tyrants in the fierceness of others' pangs

Joy and feel strong, clothing with brilliant fire,

Tyrants in Titan lands. Needs must her mouth

Have been pure honey and her bosom a charm,

Whom thou desirest seeing not the green

And common lovely sounds hast quite forgot."

And Ruru, mastered by the God, replied:

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"I know thee by thy cruel beauty bright,

Kama, who makest many worlds one fire.

Ah, wherefore wilt thou ask of her to increase

The passion and regret? Thou knowest, great love!

Thy nymph her mother, if thou truly art he

And not a dream of my disastrous soul."

But with the thrilled eternal smile that makes

The spring, the lover of Rathi golden-limbed

Replied to Ruru, "Mortal, I am he;

I am that Madan who inform the stars

With lustre and on life's wide canvas fill

Pictures of light and shade, of joy and tears,

Make ordinary moments wonderful

And common speech a charm: knit life to life

With interfusions of opposing souls

And sudden meetings and slow sorceries:

Wing the boy bridegroom to that panting breast,

Smite Gods with mortal faces, dreadfully

Among great beautiful kings and watched by eyes

That burn, force on the virgin's fainting limbs

And drive her to the one face never seen,

The one breast meant eternally for her.

By me come wedded sweets, by me the wife's

Busy delight and passionate obedience,

And loving eager service never sated,

And happy lips, and worshipping soft eyes:

And mine the husband's hungry arms and use

Unwearying of old tender words and ways,

Joy of her hair, and silent pleasure felt

Of nearness to one dear familiar shape.

Nor only these, but many affections bright

And soft glad things cluster around my name.

I plant fraternal tender yearnings, make

The sister's sweet attractiveness and leap

Of heart towards imperious kindred blood,

And the young mother's passionate deep look,

Earth's high similitude of One not earth,

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Teach filial heart-beats strong. These are my gifts

For which men praise me, these my glories calm:

But fiercer shafts I can, wild storms blown down

Shaking fixed minds and melting marble natures,

Tears and dumb bitterness and pain unpitied,

Racked thirsting jealousy and kind hearts made stone:

And in undisciplined huge souls I sow

Dire vengeance and impossible cruelties,

Cold lusts that linger and fierce fickleness,

The loves close kin to hate, brute violence

And mad insatiable longings pale,

And passion blind as death and deaf as swords.

O mortal, all deep-souled desires and all

Yearnings immense are mine, so much I can."

So as he spoke, his face grew wonderful

With vast suggestion, his human-seeming limbs

Brightened with a soft splendour: luminous hints

Of the concealed divinity transpired.

But soon with a slight discontented frown:

"So much I can, as even the great Gods learn.

Only with death I wrestle in vain, until

My passionate godhead all becomes a doubt.

Mortal, I am the light in stars, of flowers

The bloom, the nameless fragrance that pervades

Creation: but behind me, older than me,

He comes with night and cold tremendous shade.

Hard is the way to him, most hard to find,

Harder to tread, for perishable feet

Almost impossible. Yet, O fair youth,

If thou must needs go down, and thou art strong

In passion and in constancy, nor easy

The soul to slay that has survived such grief —

Steel then thyself to venture, armed by Love.

Yet listen first what heavy trade they drive

Who would win back their dead to human arms."

So much the God; but swift, with eager eyes

And panting bosom and glorious flushed face,

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The lover: "O great Love! O beautiful Love!

But if by strength is possible, of body

Or mind, battle of spirit or moving speech,

Sweet speech that makes even cruelty grow kind,

Or yearning melody — for I have heard

That when Saruswathi in heaven her harp

Has smitten, the cruel sweetness terrible

Coils taking no denial through the soul,

And tears burst from the hearts of Gods — then I,

Making great music, or with perfect words,

Will strive, or staying him with desperate hands

Match human strength 'gainst formidable Death.

But if with price, ah God! what easier! Tears

Dreadful, innumerable I will absolve,

Or pay with anguish through the centuries,

Soul's agony and torture physical,

So her small hands about my face at last

I feel, close real hair sting me with life,

And palpable breathing bosom on me press."

Then with a lenient smile the mighty God:

"O ignorant fond lover, not with tears

Shalt thou persuade immitigable Death.

He will not pity all thy pangs: nor know

His stony eyes with music to grow kind,

Nor lovely words accepts. And how wilt thou

Wrestle with that grim shadow, who canst not save

One bloom from fading? A sole thing the Gods

Demand from all men living, sacrifice:

Nor without this shall any crown be grasped.

Yet many sacrifices are there, oxen,

And prayers, and Soma wine, and pious flowers,

Blood and the fierce expense of mind, and pure

Incense of perfect actions, perfect thoughts,

Or liberality wide as the sun's,

Or ruthless labour or disastrous tears,

Exile or death or pain more hard than death,

Absence, a desert, from the faces loved;

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