Collected Poems
CONTENTS
Part One
England and Baroda 1883 1898| Poem Published in 1883 Light |
| Complete Narrative Poems Urvasie Canto Love and Death |
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Sonnets from Manuscripts, c. 1900 1901 |
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Poems from Ahana and Other Poems |
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Poems from Manuscripts, c. 1900 1906 |
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Satirical Poem Published in 1907 Reflections of Srinath Paul, Rai Bahadoor, on the Present Discontents |
| Two Poems in Quantitative Hexameters Ilion |
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Poems Written as Metrical Experiments |
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Incomplete Poems from Manuscripts, c. 1927 1947 The Inconscient and the Traveller Fire The Fire King and the Messenger I am filled with the crash of war In the silence of the midnight |
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O thou golden image, Miniature of bliss, Speaking sweetly, speaking meetly! Every word deserves a kiss.
Strange, remote and splendid Childhood's fancy pure Thrills to thoughts we cannot fathom, Quick felicities obscure.
When the eyes grow solemn Laughter fades away, Nature of her mighty childhood Recollects the Titan play;
Woodlands touched by sunlight Where the elves abode, Giant meetings, Titan greetings, Fancies of a youthful God.
These are coming on thee In thy secret thought; God remembers in thy bosom All the wonders that He wrought.
The grey sea creeps half-visible, half-hushed, And grasps with its innumerable hands These silent walls. I see beyond a rough Glimmering infinity, I feel the wash And hear the sibilation of the waves
Page – 211 That whisper to each other as they push To shoreward side by side, — long lines and dim Of movement flecked with quivering spots of foam, The quiet welter of a shifting world.
Spirit Supreme Who musest in the silence of the heart, Eternal gleam,
Thou only Art! Ah, wherefore with this darkness am I veiled, My sunlit part
By clouds assailed? Why am I thus disfigured by desire, Distracted, haled,
Scorched by the fire Of fitful passions, from thy peace out-thrust Into the gyre
Of every gust? Betrayed to grief, o'ertaken with dismay, Surprised by lust?
Let not my grey Blood-clotted past repel thy sovereign ruth, Nor even delay,
O lonely Truth! Nor let the specious gods who ape Thee still Deceive my youth.
Page – 212 These clamours still; For I would hear the eternal voice and know The eternal Will.
This brilliant show Cumbering the threshold of eternity Dispel, — bestow
The undimmed eye, The heart grown young and clear. Rebuke in me These hopes that cry
So deafeningly, Remove my sullied centuries, restore My purity.
O hidden door Of Knowledge, open! Strength, fulfil thyself! Love, outpour!
Not soon is God's delight in us completed, Nor with one life we end; Termlessly in us are our spirits seated, A termless joy intend.
Our souls and heaven are of an equal stature And have a dateless birth; The unending seed, the infinite mould of Nature, They were not made on earth,
Nor to the earth do they bequeath their ashes, But in themselves they last. An endless future brims beneath thy lashes, Child of an endless past.
Page – 213 Old memories come to us, old dreams invade us, Lost people we have known, Fictions and pictures; but their frames evade us, — They stand out bare, alone.
Yet all we dream and hope are memories treasured, Are forecasts we misspell, But of what life or scene he who has measured The boundless heavens can tell.
Time is a strong convention; future and present Were living in the past; They are one image that our wills complaisant Into three schemes have cast.
Our past that we forget, is with us deathless, Our births and later end Already accomplished. To a summit breathless Sometimes our souls ascend,
Whence the mind comes back helped; for there emerges The ocean vast of Time Spread out before us with its infinite surges, Its symphonies sublime;
And even from this veil of mind the spirit Looks out sometimes and sees The bygone aeons that our lives inherit, The unborn centuries:
It sees wave-trampled realms expel the Ocean, — From the vague depths uphurled Where now Himâloy stands, the flood's huge motion Sees measuring half the world;
Page – 214 Or else the web behind us is unravelled And on its threads we gaze, — Past motions of the stars, scenes long since travelled In Time's far-backward days.
The Triumph-Song of Trishuncou
I shall not die. Although this body, when the spirit tires Of its cramped residence, shall feed the fires, My house consumes, not I.
Leaving that case I find out ample and ethereal room. My spirit shall avoid the hungry tomb, Deceiving death's embrace.
Night shall contain The sun in its cold depths; Time too must cease; The stars that labour shall have their release. I cease not, I remain.
Ere the first seeds Were sown on earth, I was already old, And when now unborn planets shall grow cold My history proceeds.
I am the light In stars, the strength of lions and the joy Of mornings; I am man and maid and boy, Protean, infinite.
I am a tree That stands out singly from the infinite blue; I am the quiet falling of the dew And am the unmeasured sea.
Page – 215 I hold the sky Together and upbear the teeming earth. I was the eternal thinker at my birth And shall be, though I die.
Life, death, — death, life; the words have led for ages Our thought and consciousness and firmly seemed Two opposites; but now long-hidden pages Are opened, liberating truths undreamed. Life only is, or death is life disguised, — Life a short death until by life we are surprised.
A golden evening, when the thoughtful sun Rejects its usual pomp in going, trees That bend down to their green companion And fruitful mother, vaguely whispering, — these And a wide silent sea. Such hour is nearest God, — Rich like old age when the long ways have all been trod.
These wanderings of the suns, these stars at play In the due measure that they chose of old, Nor only these, but all the immense array Of objects that long Time, far Space can hold,
Page – 216 Are divine moments. They are thoughts that form, They are vision in the Self of things august And therefore grandly real. Rule and norm Are processes that they themselves adjust.
The Self of things is not their outward view, A Force within decides. That Force is He; His movement is the shape of things we knew, Movement of Thought is Space and Time. A free
And sovereign master of His world within, He is not bound by what He does or makes, He is not bound by virtue or by sin, Awake who sleeps and when He sleeps awakes.
He is not bound by waking or by sleep; He is not bound by anything at all. Laws are that He may conquer them. To creep Or soar is at His will, to rise or fall.
One from of old possessed Himself above Who was not anyone nor had a form, Nor yet was formless. Neither hate nor love Could limit His perfection, peace nor storm.
He is, we cannot say; for Nothing too Is His conception of Himself unguessed. He dawns upon us and we would pursue, But who has found Him or what arms possessed?
He is not anything, yet all is He; He is not all but far exceeds that scope. Both Time and Timelessness sink in that sea: Time is a wave and Space a wandering drop.
Page – 217 Within Himself He shadowed Being forth, Which is a younger birth, a veil He chose To half-conceal Him, Knowledge, nothing worth Save to have glimpses of its mighty cause,
And high Delight, a spirit infinite, That is the fountain of this glorious world, Delight that labours in its opposite, Faints in the rose and on the rack is curled.
This was the triune playground that He made And One there sports awhile. He plucks His flowers And by His bees is stung; He is dismayed, Flees from Himself or has His sullen hours.
The Almighty One knew labour, failure, strife; Knowledge forgot divined itself again: He made an eager death and called it life, He stung Himself with bliss and called it pain.
Thou who pervadest all the worlds below, Yet sitst above, Master of all who work and rule and know, Servant of Love!
Thou who disdainest not the worm to be Nor even the clod, Therefore we know by that humility That thou art God.
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Death wanders through our lives at will, sweet Death Is busy with each intake of our breath. Why do you fear her? Lo, her laughing face All rosy with the light of jocund grace! A kind and lovely maiden culling flowers In a sweet garden fresh with vernal showers, This is the thing you fear, young portress bright Who opens to our souls the worlds of light. Is it because the twisted stem must feel Pain when the tenderest hands its glory steal? Is it because the flowerless stalk droops dull And ghastly now that was so beautiful? Or is it the opening portal's horrid jar That shakes you, feeble souls of courage bare? Death is but changing of our robes to wait In wedding garments at the Eternal's gate.
Day and night begin, you tell me, When the sun may choose to set or rise. Well, it may be; but for me their changing Is determined only by her eyes.
Summer, spring, the fruitless winter Hinge, you say, upon the heavenly sun? Oh, but I have known a yearlong winter! Spring was by her careless smiles begun.
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