Part Two

Baroda

Circa 1898 ­ 1902

Complete Narrative Poems

Urvasie

CANTO I

Pururavus from Titan conflict ceased

Turned worldwards, through illimitable space

Had travelled like a star 'twixt earth and heaven

Slowly and brightly. Late our mortal air

He breathed; for downward now the hooves divine

Trampling out fire with sound before them went,

And the great earth rushed up towards him, green.

With the first line of dawn he touched the peaks,

Nor paused upon those savage heights, but reached

Inferior summits subject to the rain,

And rested. Looking northwards thence he saw

The giant snows upclimbing to the sky,

And felt the mighty silence. In his ear

The noise of a retreating battle was,

Wide crash of wheels and hard impetuous blare

Of trumpets and the sullen march of hosts.

Therefore with joy he drank into his soul

The virgin silence inaccessible

Of mountains and divined his mother's breasts.

But as he listened to the hush, a thought

Came to him from the spring and he turned round

And gazed into the quiet maiden East,

Watching that birth of day, as if a line

Of some great poem out of dimness grew,

Slowly unfolding into perfect speech.

The grey lucidity and pearliness

Bloomed more and more, and over earth chaste again

The freshness of the primal dawn returned,

Life coming with a virginal sharp strength,

Renewed as from the streams of Paradise.

Nearer it drew now to him and he saw

Out of the widening glory move a face

Of dawn, a body fresh from mystery,

Enveloped with a prophecy of light

More rich than perfect splendours. It was she,

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The golden virgin, Usha, mother of life,

Yet virgin. In a silence sweet she came,

Unveiled, soft-smiling, like a bride, rose-cheeked,

Her bosom full of flowers, the morning wind

Stirring her hair and all about her gold.

Nor sole she came. Behind her faces laughed

Delicious, girls of heaven whose beauties ease

The labour of the battle-weary Gods;

They in the golden dawn of things sprang gold,

From youth of the immortal Ocean born,

They youthful and immortal, and the waves

Were in their feet and in their voices fresh

As foam, and Ocean in their souls was love.

Laughing they ran among the clouds, their hair

And raiment all a tempest in the breeze.

The sky grew glorious with them and their feet

A restless loveliness and glad eyes full

Of morning and divine faces bent back

For the imperious kisses of the wind.

So danced they numberless as dew-drops gleam,

Ménaca, Misracayshie, Mullica,

Rumbha, Nelabha, Shela, Nolinie,

Lolita, Lavonya and Tilôttama,  —

Many delightful names; among them she.

And seeing her Pururavus the king

Shuddered as of felicity afraid,

And all the wide heart of Pururavus

Moved like the sea  —  when with a coming wind

Great Ocean lifts in far expectancy

Waiting to feel the shock, so was he moved

By expectation of her face. For this

Was secret in its own divinity

Like a high sun of splendour, or half seen

All troubled with her hair. Yet Paradise

Breathed from her limbs and tresses wonderful,

With odours and with dreams. Then for a space

Voiceless the great king stood and, troubled, watched

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That lovely advent, laughter and delight

Gaining upon the world. At last he sighed

And the vague passion broke from him in speech

Heard by the solitude. "O thou strong god,

Who art thou graspest me with hands of fire,

Making my soul all colour? Surely I thought

The hills would move and the eternal stars

Deviate from their rounds immutable,

Never Pururavus; yet lo! I fall.

My soul whirls alien and I hear amazed

The galloping of uncontrollable steeds.

Men said of me: The King Pururavus

Grows more than man; he lifts to azure heaven

In vast equality his spirit sublime.'

Why sink I now towards attractive earth?

And thou, who art thou, mystery! golden wonder!

Moving enchantress! Wast thou not a part

Of soft auspicious evenings I have loved?

Have I not seen thy beauty on the clouds?

In moonlight and in starlight and in fire?

Some flower whose brightness was a trouble? a face

Whose memory like a picture lived with me?

A thought I had, but lost? O was thy voice

A vernal repetition in some grove,

Telling of lilies clustered o'er with bees

And quiet waters open to the moon?

Surely in some past life I loved thy name,

And syllable by syllable now strive

Its sweetness to recall. It seems the grace

Of visible things, of hushed and lonely snows

And burning great inexorable noons,

And towns and valleys and the mountain winds.

All beauty of earthliness is in thee, all

Luxurious experience of the soul.

O comest thou because I left thy charm

Aiming at purity, O comest thou,

Goddess, to avenge thyself with beauty? Come!

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Unveil thyself from light! limit thyself,

O infinite grace, that I may find, may clasp.

For surely in my heart I know thou bearest

A name that naturally weds with mine,

And I perceive our union magically

Inevitable as a perfect verse

Of Veda. Set thy feet upon my heart,

O Goddess! woman, to my bosom move!

I am Pururavus, O Urvasie."

As when a man to the grey face of dawn

Awaking from an unremembered dream,

Repines at life awhile and buffets back

The wave of old familiar thoughts, and hating

His usual happiness and usual cares

Strives to recall a dream's felicity;  —

Long strives in vain and rolls his painful thought

Through many alien ways, when sudden comes

A flash, another, and the vision burns

Like lightning in the brain, so leaped that name

Into the musing of the troubled king.

Joyous he cried aloud and lashed his steeds:

They, rearing, leaped from Himalaya high

And trampled with their hooves the southern wind.

But now a cry broke from the lovely crowd

Of fear and tremulous astonishment;

And they huddled together like doves dismayed

Who see the inevitable talons near

And rush of cruel wings. 'Twas not from him,

For him they saw not yet, but from the north

A fear was on them, and Pururavus

Heard a low roar as of a distant cloud.

He turned half-wrathful. In the far northwest

Heaven stood thick, concentrated in gloom,

Darkness in darkness hidden; for the cloud

Rose firmament on sullen firmament,

As if all brightness to entomb. Across

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Great thundrous whispers rolled, and lightning quivered

From edge to edge, a savage pallor. Down

The south wind dropped appalled. Then for a while

Stood pregnant with the thunderbolt and wearing

Rain like a colour, the monumental cloud

Sublime and voiceless. Long the heart was stilled

And the ear waited listening. Suddenly

From motionless battalions as outride

A speed disperse of horsemen, from that mass

Of livid menace went a frail light cloud

Rushing through heaven, and behind it streamed

The downpour all in wet and greenish lines.

Swift rushed the splendid anarchy admired,

And reached, and broke, and with a roar of rain

And tumult on the wings of wind and clasp

Of the o'erwhelmed horizons and with bursts

Of thunder breaking all the body with sound

And lightning 'twixt the eyes intolerable,

Like heaven's vast eagle all that blackness swept

Down over the inferior snowless heights

And swallowed up the dawn. Pururavus,

Lost in the streaming tumult, stood amazed:

But as he watched, he was aware of locks

Flying and a wild face and terrible

And fierce familiar eyes. Again he looked

And knew him in a hundred battles crossed,

The giant Cayshie. It seemed but yesterday

That over the waves of fight their angry eyes

Had met. He in the dim disguise of rain,

All swift with storm, came passionate and huge,

Filling the regions with himself. Immense

He stooped upon the brides of heaven. They

Like flowers in a gust scattered and blown

Fled every way; but he upon that beauty

Magical sprang and seized and lifted up,

As the storm lifts a lily, and arrow-like

Up towards the snow-bound heights in rising cloud

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Rushed with the goddess to the trembling East.

But with more formidable speed and fast

Storming through heaven King Pururavus

Hurled after him. The giant turned and knew

The sound of those victorious wheels and light

In a man's face more dangerous to evil

Than all the shining Gods. He stood, he raised

One dreadful arm that stretched across the heavens,

And shook his baffling lance on high. But vast,

But magnified by speed came threatening on

With echoing hooves and battle in its wheels

The chariot of the King Pururavus

Bearing a formidable charioteer,

Pururavus. The fiend paused, he rolled his eyes

Full of defiance, passion and despair

Upon the swooning goddess in his arms

And that avenger. Violence and fear

Poised him a moment on a wave of fate

This way to death cadent, that way to shame.

Then groaning in his great tumultuous breast

He dropped upon the snow heaven's ravished flower

And fled, a blackness in the East. New sky

Replenished from the sullen cloud dawned out;

The great pure azure rose in sunlight wide.

Nor King Pururavus pursued but checked

His rushing chariot on the quiet snow

And sprang towards her and knelt down and trembled.

Perfect she lay amid her tresses wide,

Like a mishandled lily luminous,

As she had fallen. From the lucid robe

One shoulder gleamed and golden breast left bare,

Divinely lifting, one gold arm was flung,

A warm rich splendour exquisitely outlined

Against the dazzling whiteness, and her face

Was as a fallen moon among the snows.

And King Pururavus, beholding, glowed

Through all his limbs and maddened with a love

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He feared and cherished. Overawed and hushed,

Hardly even breathing, long he knelt, a greatness

Made stone with sudden dread and passion. Love

With fiery attempt plucked him all down to her,

But fear forbade his lips the perfect curls.

At length he raised her still unkissed and laid

In his bright chariot, next himself ascended

And resting on one arm with fearful joy

Her drooping head, with the other ruled the car;  —

With one arm ruled, but his eyes were for her

Studying her fallen lids and to heart-beats

Guessing the sweetness of the soul concealed.

And soon she moved. Those wonderful wide orbs

Dawned into his, quietly, as if in muse.

A lovely slow surprise crept into them

Afterwards; last, something far lovelier,

Which was herself, and was delight, and love.

As when a child falls asleep unawares

At a closed window on a stormy day,

Looking into the weary rain, and long

Sleeps, and wakes quietly into a life

Of ancient moonlight, first the thoughtfulness

Of that felicitous world to which the soul

Is visitor in sleep, keeps her sublime

Discurtained eyes; human dismay comes next,

Slowly; last, sudden, they brighten and grow wide

With recognition of an altered world,

Delighted: so woke Urvasie to love.

But, hardly now that luminous inner dawn

Bridged joy between their eyes, laughter broke in

And the returning world; for Ménaca,

Standing a lily in the snows, laughed back

Those irresistible wheels and spoke like song;  —

She tremulous and glad from bygone fear;

But all those flowerlike came, increasing light,

Their bosoms quick and panting, bright, like waves

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That under sunshine lift remembering storm.

And before all Ménaca tremulously

Smiling: "Whither, O King Pururavus,

Bear'st thou thy victory? Wilt thou set her

A golden triumph in thy halls? But she

Is other than thy marble caryatids

And austere doors, purity colourless.

Read not too much thy glory in her eyes.

Will not that hueless inner stream yet serve

Where thou wast wont to know thy perfect deeds?

But give her back, give us our sister back,

And in return take all thyself with thee."

So with flushed cheeks and smiling Ménaca.

And great Pururavus set down the nymph

In her bright sister's arms and stood awhile

Stormily calm in vast incertitude,

Quivering. Then divine Tilôttama:

"O King, O mortal mightier than the Gods!

For Gods change not their strength, but are of old

And as of old, and man, though less than these,

May yet proceed to greater, self-evolved.

Man, by experience of passion purged,

His myriad faculty perfecting, widens

His nature as it rises till it grows

With God conterminous. For one who tames

His hot tremulousness of soul unblest

And feels around him like an atmosphere

A quiet perfectness of joy and peace,

He, like the sunflower sole of all the year,

Images the divine to which he tends:

So thou, sole among men. And thou today

Hast a high deed perfected, saved from death

The great Gods of the solar world the first,

And saved with them the stars; but her today

Without whom all that world would grow to shade

Or grow to fire, but each way cease to live.

And thou shalt gather strange rewards, O King,

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Hurting thyself with good, and lose thy life

To have the life of all the solar world,

Draw infinite gain out of more infinite loss,

And, for the lowest, endless fame. Today

Retire nor pluck the slowly-ripening fates;

Since who anticipates the patient Gods,

Finds his crown ashes and his empire grief.

So choose blind Titans in their violent souls

Unseeing, forfeiting the beautiful world

For momentary splendours." She was silent,

And he replied no word, but gathering

His reins swept from the golden group. His car

Through those mute Himalayan doors of earth

And all that silent life before our life

Solitary and great and merciless,

Went groaning down the wind. He, the sole living,

Over the dead deep-plunging precipices

Passed bright and small in a wide dazzling world

Illimitable, where eye flags and ear

Listening feels inhuman loneliness.

He tended towards Gungotri's solemn peaks

And savage glaciers and the caverns pure

Whence Ganges leaps, our mother, virgin-cold.

But ere he plunged into the human vales

And kindlier grandeurs, King Pururavus

Looked back upon a gust of his great heart,

And saw her. On a separate peak, divine,

In blowing raiment and a glory of hair

She stood and watched him go with serious eyes

And a soft wonder in them and a light.

One hand was in her streaming folds, one shaded

Her eyes as if the vision that she saw

Were brighter even than deathless eyes endure.

Over her shoulder pressed a laughing crowd

Of luminous faces. And Pururavus

Staggered as smitten, and shaking wide his reins

Rushed like a star into the infinite air;

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So curving downwards on precipitate wheels,

His spirit all a storm, came with the wind

Far-sounding into Ila's peaceful town.

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