{"id":1439,"date":"2013-07-13T01:34:49","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:34:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1439"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:34:49","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:34:49","slug":"89-the-descent-of-ahana-vol-05-collected-poems-volume-05","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/05-collected-poems-volume-05\/89-the-descent-of-ahana-vol-05-collected-poems-volume-05","title":{"rendered":"-89_The Descent of Ahana.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

 <\/td>\n

\n

\n
\n
\nThe
\nDescent of Ahana*<\/span><\/b><\/font><\/p>\n

AHANA<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nS<\/b>trayed
\nfrom the roads of Time, far-couched on the void I have slumbered;
\nCenturies passed me unnoticed, millenniums perished unnumbered.
\nI, Ahana, slept. In the stream of thy sevenfold Ocean,
\nBeing, how hast thou laboured without me? Whence was thy motion?
\nNot without me can thy existence be. But I came fleeing;-
\nVexed was my soul with joys of sound and weary of seeing;
\nInto the deeps of my nature I lapsed, I escaped into slumber.
\nOut of the silence who call me back to the clamour and cumber?
\nWhy should I go with you? What hast thou done in return for my labour,
\nWorld? What wage had my soul when its strength was thy neighbour,
\nThough I have loved all, working and suffering, giving them pleasure?
\nI have escaped from it all; I have fled the pitiless pressure.
\nSilence vast and pure, again to thy wideness receive me;
\nFor unto thee I turn back from those who would use me and grieve me.<\/p>\n

VOICES<\/p>\n

Nay, it is done, to the lash of our cry thou hast started, 0 Woman.
\nLured shalt thou fall from thy empty peace and the silence inhuman.
\nJoy <\/i>as thou canst, endure as thou must, but bend to our uses.
\nVainly thy heart repines, – thou wast made for this, – vainly refuses.
\nWilt thou then crave for a recompense? Other the nature He gave thee,
\nScourged and indulged, to obey and to wrestle with strengths that enslave
\n                                                                                                       
\nthee.
\nJust as thy nature, thy task for the love and the laughter of the ages;
\nMighty thou art, but a slave, and the chain arid the whip are thy wages.
\n<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\nAHANA<\/p>\n

Voices of joy, from the roseate arbour of sense and the places
\nThrilled with the song and the scent and peopled with beautiful faces,
\nLong in your closes of springtime, lured to joyances unsated
\nTarried my heart and I walked in your meadows, your chaplets I plaited,
\nPlayed in your garden of ease and, careless of blasts in the distance,
\nPaced, pursued by the winds, your orchard of autumn’s persistence,
\nSaw on the dance of a ripple your lotus that slumbers and quivers,
\nHeard your nightingales warbling in covert by moon-glided rivers.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n*The
\nearlier and unrevised version of the poem of which the last portion was
\nconsi-<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\n
\nderably revised and enlarged under the title Ahana.<\/i><\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-537<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nBut
\nI relinquished your streams and I turned from your moon-beams and
\n  
\n                                                                                               flowers;
\nNow I have done with space and my soul is released from the hours.
\nFreed am I now from the need of joy, the attraction to sorrow,
\nWho have escaped from my past and forgotten today and tomorrow;
\nI have grown vacant and mighty, naked and wide as the azure.
\nWill you now plant in this blast, on this snow your roses of pleasure?
\nOnce was a dwelling here that was made for the dance of the Graces,
\nBut I have hewn down its gardens and ravaged its delicate places,
\nDriven the revellers out from their pleasance to wander unfriended,
\nFlung down the walls and over the debris written ’tis ended’.
\nNow, and I know not yet wherefore, the Mighty One suffers you near Him,
\nBut in their coming the great Gods hesitate seeming to fear Him.
\nThought returns to my soul like a stranger. Sweetness and feature
\nDraw back appalled to their kind from the frozen vasts of my nature.
\nTurn back, you also, angels of yearning, vessels of sweetness.
\nHave I not wandered from Time, left ecstasy, outstripped completeness?<\/p>\n

VOICES<\/p>\n

Goddess, we moaned upon earth and we wandered exiled from heaven.
\nJoy from us fled; our hearts to the worm and the arrow were given.
\nOld delights we remembered, natures of ecstasy keeping,
\nHastened from rose to rose, but were turned back wounded and weeping:
\nSnatches of pleasure we seized; they were haunted and challenged by sorrow.
\nMarred was our joy of the day by the care and the dread of the morrow.
\nStar of infinity, we have beheld thee bright and unmoving
\nSeated above us, in tracts unattained by us, throned beyond loving.
\nLonely thou sittest above in the fruitless vasts of the Spirit.
\nWaitest thou, Goddess, then for a purer world to inherit?
\nWilt thou not perfect, this rather that sprang too from Wisdom and Power?
\nTaking the earthly rose canst thou image not Heaven in a flower?
\nWinging like bees to thy limbs we made haste like flames through the azure,
\n0 we were ploughed with delight, we were pierced as with arrows of pleasure.
\nRapture yearned and the Uswins cried to us; Indra arising.
\nGazed from the heights of his mental realms and the moonbeams surprising
\nFlowed on him out of the regions immortal; their nectar slowly
\nMixed with the scattered roses of dawn and mastered us wholly.
\nCome, come down to us, Woman divine whom the world unforgetting
\nYearns for still; we will draw thee, 0 star, from thy colourless setting.
\nLonely thou sittest above in the fruitless vasts of the Spirit;<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n


\nPage-538<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nWaitest
\nthou, Goddess, then for some younger world to complete or inherit?
\nNay, if thou save not this, will another rise from the spaces? .
\nOnly the past fulfilled can conjure room to the future that presses.\u00b9<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nGoddess, we understand thee not; Woman, we know not thy nature;
\nThis yet we know we have need of thee here in our world of misfeature.
\nTherefore we call to thee and would compel if our hands could but reach
\n                                                                                                           
\nthee.
\n0, we have means to compel; we have many a sweetness to teach thee
\nCharming thee back to thy task mid our fields and our sunbeams and flowers,
\nWeaving a net for thy feet with the snare of the moonlit hours.<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

AHANA<\/p>\n

Spirits of helpless rapture, spirits of sweetness and playtime,
\nThrilled with my honey of night and drunk with my wine of the daytime,
\nIf there were strengths that could seize on the world for their passion and
\n  
\n                                                                                                    rapture,
\nIf there were souls that could hunt after God as a prey for their capture,
\nSuch might aspire to possess me. I am Ahana the mighty,
\nI am Ashtaroth, I am the goddess, divine Aphrodite.
\nYou have a thirst full sweet, but earth’s vineyards quickly assuage it:
\nHearts there must be that outmeasure existence, strengths that besiege it,
\nNatures fit for my vastness! Return to your haunts, 0 ye shadows
\nBeautiful. Not of my will I descend to the bee-haunted meadows,
\nRivulets stealing through flowers. Let those who are mighty aspire,
\nGods if there are of such greatness, to seize on the world’s Desire.<\/p>\n

VOICES<\/p>\n

Good, it is spoken. We wait thee, Ahana, where fugitive traces
\nCame of the hunted prey of the Titans in desert places
\nTrod by thee once when the world was mighty and violent. Risen,
\nHark, they ascend; they are freed by thy call from the seals of their prison.
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nAHANA<\/p>\n

Rush I can hear as of wings in the void and the march of a nation.
\nShapes of old mightiness visit me; movements of ancient elation
\nStride and return in my soul, and it turns like an antelope fleeing.
\nWhat was the cry that thou drewst from my bosom, Lord of my being?
\nLo, their souls are cast on my soul like forms in a mirror!
\nHark, they arise, they aspire, they are near, and I shudder with terror,<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00b9<\/font>Is
\nnot the past fulfilled that finds room for the future faces?<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-539<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nQuake
\nwith delight and attraction. Lord of the worlds, dost thou leave me
\nBare for their seizing? Of peace and of strength in a moment bereave me?
\nLong hast Thou kept me safe in Thy soul, but I lose my defences.
\nThought streams fast on me; joy is awake and the strife of the senses.
\nAh, they have clutched my feet, my thighs are seized by them! Legions
\nMighty around me they stride: I feel them filling the regions.
\nSee’st Thou their hands on my locks? Wilt Thou suffer it, Master of Nature?
\nI am Thy force and Thy strength; wilt Thou hand me enslaved to Thy
\n  
\n                                                                                                
\ncreature?
\nHeadlong they drag me down to their dreadful worlds far below me.
\nWhat will you do with me there, 0 you mighty Ones? Speak to me, show me
\nOne of your faces, teach me one of your names while you ravish,
\nDragging my arms and my knees while you hurry me. Tell me what lavish
\nEcstasy, show me what torture immense you seize me for. Quittance
\nWhen shall I have from my labour? What term has your tyranny, Titans?
\nMasters fierce of your worlds who would conquer the higher creation,
\nWhat is your will with me, giants of violence, lords of elation?<\/p>\n

V<\/span><\/font>OICES<\/p>\n

In the beginning of things when nought was abroad but the waters,
\nOcean stirred with longing his mighty and deep-bosomed daughters.
\nOut of that longing gigantic we rose from the voiceless recesses;\u00b9
\n<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nCandid, unwarmed, O Ahana the wide ethereal abysses\u00b2<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nStretched enormous, silent, void of the breath of thy greatness;
\nWe alone peopled, and troubled with rapture their ancient sedateness:\u00b3<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nWe are the gods who have mapped out Time and measured its spaces;
\nRaised there our mansions of pride and planted its amorous places.
\nTrembling like flowers appeared in the void the immense constellations;
\nGods grew possessed of their heavens, earth rose with her joy-haunted
\n  
\n                                                                                                        
\nnations.
\nCalm were we, mighty, magnificent, hunting and seizing
\nWhatso we willed through the world, in a rapture that thought not of ceasing.4<\/sup> <\/span>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\nBut thou hast turned from us, favouring gods who are slighter, and fairer,
\nSwift-footed, subtle of mind; but the sword was too great for the bearer,
\nHeavy the sceptre weighed upon hands not created to bear it.
\nCruel and jealous the gods of thy choice were, cunning of spirit,
\n(Suave were their eyes of beauty that mastered thy heart, 0 woman!)<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00b9heart
\nof the ocean;    
\n\u00b2spaces
\nempty of motion      <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00b3Hushed
\nto thy sweetnesses, rapt in the (calm?) of their ancient sedateness:
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>
\n4<\/sup><\/span><\/font>enjoying
\nand, careless, releasing.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-540<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nThey
\nwho to govern our world, made it tarnished, sorrowful, common.
\n[Mystic and vast our world, but they hoped in their smallness to sum it
\nSchooled and coerced in themselves and they sank an ignorant plummet
\nInto infinity, shaping a limited beauty and power,
\nConfident, figuring Space in an inch and Time in an hour.
\nTherefore pleasure was troubled and beauty tarnished, madness
\nMated with knowledge, the heart of purity sullied with sadness.
\nStrife began twixt the Infinite deathless within and the measure
\nFalsely imposed from without on its thought and its force and its pleasure.]\u00b9
\nWe who could help were condemned in their sunless Hells to languish,
\nShaking the world with the heave of our limbs, for our breath was an anguish.
\nThere were we cast down, met and repulsed by the speed of their thunder,
\nEarth piled on us, our Mother; her heart of fire burned under.
\nNow we escape, we are free; our triumph and bliss are before us,
\nEarth is our prey and the heavens our hunting ground; stars in their chorus
\nChant, wide-wheeling, our paean; the world is awake and rejoices:
\nHast thou not heard its trampling of strengths and its rapturous voices?
\nIs not our might around thee yet? does not our thunder-winged fleetness
\nDrag thee down yet to the haunts of our strength and the cups of our
\n  
\n                                                                                        
\nsweetness?
\nThere thou shalt suffer couched on our mountains, over them stretching
\nAll thy defenceless bliss, thy pangs to eternity reaching.
\nThou shalt be taken and whelmed in our trampling and bottomless Oceans,
\nChained to the rocks of the world and condemned to our giant emotions.
\nViolent joy thou shalt have of us, raptures and ruthless revulsions
\nRacking and tearing thee, and each thrill of thy honied convulsions,
\nWe, as it shakes the mountains, we as thou churnst up the waters,
\nLaughing shall turn to a joy for Delight and her pitiless daughters.
\nThey shall be changed to a strength for the gods and for death-besieged
\n  
\n                                                                                                        
\nnatures.
\nWhen we have conquered, when thou hast yielded to earth and her creatures,
\nBoundless, thy strength, 0 Ahana, delivered, thy sorrowless joyance,
\nHope, if thou canst, release from the meed of thy pride and defiance.
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nAHANA<\/p>\n

Gods irresistible, blasts of His violence, fighters eternal,
\nChurners of Ocean, stormers of Heaven! but limits diurnal
\nChafe you and bonds of the Night. I know in my soul I am given,
\nRacked to your joys as a sacrifice, writhing, to raise you to heaven.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n\u00b9The
\nsquare brackets are in the original.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-541<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n


\nTherefore
\nyou seize on me, vanquish and carry me swift to my falling.
\nFain would I linger, pain resist, to Infinity calling;
\nBut you possess all my limbs, you compel me, giants of evil.
\nAm I then doomed to your darkness and violence, moonlight and revel?
\nHast thou no pity, 0 Earth,\u00b9  my
\nsoul from this death to deliver?
\nWho are you, luminous movements? Around me you glimmer and quiver.
\nVisible, not to the eyes, and not audible, only you call me,
\nTeaching my soul with sound and the joy that shall seize and befall me.\u00b2
\nWhat are you, lords of the brightness vague that aspires, but fulfils not?
\nFor you possess and retire but your yearning quenches not, stills not.
\nYet is your touch a pleasure that thrills all my soul with its sweetness:
\nI am in love with your whispers and snared by your bright incompleteness.
\nSpeak to me, downward falling, and comfort me. Will you not follow
\nStill to console on the hills of my pain and in Ocean’s hollow?\u00b3<\/p>\n

VOICES<\/p>\n

We are the Ancients of Knowledge, Ahana, the Sons of the Morning.
\nWhy dost thou cry to us, Daughter of Bliss, who left us with scorning?
\nWe too dwelt in delight when these were supreme in their spaces;
\nWe too were riven with pain when they fell down prone from their places.
\nHast thou forgotten the world as it was ere thou fledst from our nations?
\nDost thou remember at all the joy of the ancient creations?
\nThrilled were its streams with our intimate bliss and our happy contriving;
\nSound was a song and movement the dance of our rhythmical living.
\nOut of our devious delight came the senses and all their deceptions;
\nEarth was our ring of bliss and the map of our mighty conceptions.
\nFor we sustained the inert sitting secret in clod and in petal,
\nAnd we awoke to a twilight of life in the leaf and the metal.
\nActive we dreamed in the mind and we ordered our dreams to a measure,
\nMaking an image of pain and shaping an idol of pleasure.
\nGood we have made by our thoughts and sin by our fear and recoiling;
\nIt was our weakness invented grief, 0 delight! reconciling
\nAlways the touch that was borne with strength that went out for possessing,
\nSomewhere, somehow we failed; there was discord, a pang, a regressing.
\nGoddess, His whispers bewildered us; over us vainly aspirant<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00b9Is
\nthere no help in the world,<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00b2You
\nwho are visible, not to the eyes, who, not audible, flutter
\nTeaching my soul with sound; your name and your progeny utter.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00b3Speak
\nto me, comfort me falling, grapple me, follow
\nDown to the hills of my pain and into the Ocean’s hollow.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-542<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nGalloped
\nthe throng of His strengths like the steeds of a pitiless tyrant.
\nSince in the woods of the world we have wandered, thrust from sereneness,
\nErring mid pleasures that fled and dangers that coiled in the greenness.
\nSomeone surrounds and possesses our lives whom we cannot discover,
\nSomeone our heart in its hunger pursues with the moans of a lover.
\nKnowledge faints in its toil, amasses but loses its guerdon;
\nStrength is a worker blinded and maimed who is chained to his burden,
\nLove a seeker astray; he finds in a seeming, then misses;
\nWeariness hampers his feet. Desire with unsatisfied kisses
\nClings to each object she lights upon, loving, forsaking, returning:
\nEarth is filled with her sobs and the cry of her fruitlessly burning.
\nAll things we sounded here. Everything leaves us or fails in the spending;
\nStrength has its weakness, knowledge its night and joy has its ending.
\nIs it not thou who shalt rescue us, freeing the Titans, the Graces?
\nHast thou not hidden thyself in the mask of a million faces?
\nNay, from thyself thou art hidden; thy secret intention thou shunnest
\nAnd from the joy thou hast willed like an antelope fleest and runnest.
\nThou shalt be forced, O Ahana, to bearr enjoyment and knowing
\nTermlessly. Come, 0 come from thy whiteness and distance, thou glowing,
\nMighty and hundred-ecstasied Woman! Daughter of Heaven,
\nUsha, descend to thy pastimes below and thy haunts that are given.
\nShe-wolf avid of cruelty, lioness eager for battle,
\nTigress that prowlst in the night and leapest out dire on the cattle,
\nSarama, dog of the heavens, thou image of grosser enjoying,
\nHungry slave of the worlds, incessantly pawing and toying,
\nSnake of delight and of poison, gambolling beast of the meadows,
\nCome to thy pastures, Ahana, sport in the sunbeams and shadows.
\nNaiad swimming through streams and Dryad fleeing through forest
\nWild, from the clutch of the Satyr! Ahana, who breakest and restorest!
\nOread, mountain Echo, cry to the rocks in thy running!
\nNymph in recess and in haunt the pursuit and the melody shunning!
\nGiantess, cruel and false and grand! Gandharvi that singest
\nHeavenward, bird exultant through storm and through sapphire who wingest!
\nCentauress galloping wild through the woods of Himaloy high-crested!
\nYakshini brooding o’er treasure down in earth’s bowels arrested!
\nDemoness gnashing thy teeth in the burial-ground! Titaness striding
\nRestless through worlds for thy rest, the brain and the bosom not ridding
\nEven one hour of the ferment-waste and the load beyond bearing,
\nRecklessly slaying the peoples in anger, recklessly sparing,
\nSpending the strength that is thine to inherit the doom of another!<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n


\nPage-543<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nGoddess
\nof pity who yearnst and who helpest, Durga and Mother!
\nBrooder in Delphi’s caverns, Voice in the groves of Dodona!
\nGoddess serene of an ancient progeny, Dian, Latona!
\nVirgin! ascetic frank or remote, Athene the mighty!
\nHarlot supine to the worlds, insatiate white Aphrodite!
\nHundred-named art thou, goddess, a hundred-formed, and thy bosom
\nThrills all the world with its breasts, 0 starlight, 0 mountain, 0 blossom!
\nRain that descendest kissing our lips and lightning that slayest!
\nThou who destroyest to save, to delight who hurtst and dismayest!
\nThou art our mother and sister and bride. 0 girdled with splendour,
\nCruel and bright as the sun, 0 moonlike, mystic and tender!
\nThou art the perfect peopling of Space, 0 Ahana; thou only
\nFillest Time with thy forms. Leave then thy eternity lonely,
\nCome! from thy summits descending arrive to us, Daughter of Heaven,
\nUsha, Dawn of the world, for our ways to thy footsteps are given.
\nStrength thou hast built for the floor of the world and delight for its rafter.
\nCalm are thy depths, 0 Ahana, above is thy hundred-mouthed laughter.
\nRapture can fail not in thee though he rend like a lion preying
\nBody and soul with his ecstasies vast. These for ever delaying,
\nFeigning to end, shall renew thyself, never exhausting his blisses,
\nJoy shall be in thy bosom satisfied never with kisses;
\nStrength from thy breasts drawing force of the Titans shall unrelaxing
\nStride through the worlds at his work. One shall drive him ruthlessly taxing
\nSinew and nerve, he shall toil exultantly, helpless to tire,
\nBorne by unstumbling speed to the soul of a God’s desire.
\nWhat shall thy roof be, crown of thy building? Knowledge, sublimely,
\nHigh on her vaulted arches where thought, half-lost, wings dimly,
\nLuring the flaming heart above and the soul in its stillness
\nPure in a sky beyond sky. Delivered from virtue and vileness,\u00b9
\nVast, uncompelled we shall range once more\u00b2
\nat peace with our nature,
\nReconciled, knowing ourselves. To her pain and the longings that reach her
\nCome from thy summits, Ahana, come! Our desire unrelenting
\nHales thee down from God and He smiles at thee sweetly consenting.
\nLo, she is hurried down and the regions live in her tresses.
\nWorlds, she descends to you! Peoples, she nears with her mighty caresses.
\nMan in his sojourn, Gods in their going, Titans exultant
\nThrill with thy fall, 0 Ahana, and wait for the godhead resultant.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00b9Luring
\nthe flaming heart above and the soul through its shadows.
\nWinging wide like a bird through the night and the moonlit meadows,<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00b2released
\nand<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-544<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nA<\/span><\/font>HANA<\/p>\n

Calm like a goddess, alarmed like a bride is my spirit descending,
\nFalling, 0 Gods, to your arms. I know my beginning and ending;
\nAll I have known and I am not astonished; alarmed and attracted
\nTherefore my soul descends foreknowing the rapture\u00b9<\/font><\/span> <\/span>
\nexacted,
\n<\/span><\/span>
\nGulf of the joys you would doom me to, torment of infinite striving,
\nTravail of knowledge. Was I not made for your mightier living?
\nGods, I am falling, I am descending, cast down as for ever,
\nThrown as a slave at your feet and a tool for your ruthless endeavour.
\nYet while I fall, I will threaten you. Hope shall be yours, so it trembles.
\nI have a bliss that destroys and the death in me wooes and dissembles.
\nWill you not suffer then my return to my peace beyond telling?
\nYou have accepted death for your pastime, Titans rebelling!
\nHope then from pain delight and from death an immortal stature!
\nSlaves of her instruments, rise to be equals and tyrants of Nature!
\nLay not your hands so fiercely upon me! Compel me not, falling!<\/span><\/font>\u00b2<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n‘Tis not a merciful One that you seize. I fall and, arisen,
\nEarth strides towards me. Gods, my possessors, kingdoms, my prison,
\nSo shall you prosper or die as you use or misuse and deceive me.
\nVast, I descend from God. 0 world and its masters, receive me!
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\nII<\/b><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\nA<\/span>HANA<\/p>\n

<\/span>
\nLo, on the hills I have paused, on the peaks of the world I have halted
\nHere in the middle realms of Varuna the world-wide exalted.
\nGods, who have drawn me down to the labour and sobs of creation,
\nFirst I would speak with the troubled hearts and the twilit nation,
\nSpeak then, I bend my ear to the far terrestrial calling,
\nSpeak, 0 thou toiling race of humanity, welcome me falling,
\nSpace for whose use in a boundless thought was unrolled and extended;
\nTime in its cycles waited for man. Though his kingdom is ended,
\nHere in a speck mid the suns and his life is a throb in the aeons,
\nYet, 0 you Titans and Gods, 0 Rudras, 0 strong Aditians,
\nMan is the centre and knot; he is first, though the last in the ages.
\nI would remember your cycles, recover your vanished pages;
\nI have the vials divine, I rain down the honey and manna;
\nSpeak, 0 thou soul of humanity, knowing me. I am Ahana.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00b9<\/font><\/span>your
\npleasures     <\/span>
\n<\/font>
\n
\n \u00b2<\/font><\/span><\/font>A
\nline before or after this seems to be missing.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-545<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nA
\nVOICE<\/p>\n

Vision bright, that walkest crowned on the hills far above me,
\nVision of bliss, stoop down from thy calm and thy silence to love me
\nOnly is calm so sweet? Is our end tranquillity only?
\nChill are your rivers of peace and their banks are leafless and lonely.
\nArt thou not sated with sunlight only, cold in its lustre?
\nArt thou not weary of only the stars in their solemn muster?
\nAlways the hills and the high-hung plateaus, – solitude’s voices
\nMaking the silence lonelier! Only the eagle rejoices
\nIn the inhuman height of his nesting, – austerely striving,
\nDeaf with the cry of the waterfall, only the pine there is thriving.
\nWe have the voice of the cuckoo, the nightingale sings in the branches.
\nHuman laughter leads and the cattle low in the ranches.
\nCome to our tangled sunbeams, dawn on our twilights and shadows,
\nTaste with us, scent with us fruits of our trees and flowers of our meadows.
\nArt thou an angel of God in His heavens that they vaunt of, His sages?
\nSkies of monotonous calm and His stillness filling the ages?
\nIs He thy master, Rudra the mighty, Shiva ascetic?
\nHas He denied thee his worlds? In His dance that they tell of, ecstatic,
\nSlaying, creating, calm in the midst of his movement and madness?
\nWas there no place for an earthly joy, for a human sadness?
\nDid He not make us and thee? 0 Woman, joy’s delicate blossom
\nSleeps in thy lids of delight! All Nature laughs in thy bosom
\nHiding her children unborn and the food of her love and her laughter.
\nIs He then first? Was there none before Him? Shall none come after?
\nWe too have gods, – the Tritons rise in the leap of the billows,
\nEmerald locks of the Nereids stream on their foam-crested pillows,
\nDryads sway out from the branches, Naiads glance up through the waters;
\nHeaven has dances of joy and the gods are ensnared by her daughters.
\nArtemis calls as she flees through the glades and the breezes pursue her,
\nCypris laughs in her isles where the Ocean-winds linger to woo her.
\nThou shalt behold in glades forgotten the dance of the Graces,
\nNight shall be haunted for ever with strange and delicate faces.
\nLo, all these peoples and who was it fashioned them? Who is unwilling
\nStill to have done with it? laughs beyond pain and saves in the killing?
\nNature, you say; but is God then her enemy? Was she created,
\nHe unknowing or sleeping? Did someone transgress the fated
\nLimits He set, outwitting God? Nay, we know it was fashioned
\nBy the Almighty One, million-ecstasied, thousand-passioned.
\nBut He created a discord within it, fashioned a limit?
\n<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n


\n
\nPage \u2013 546<\/p>\n

<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\n
\nFashioned or figured? For He set completeness beyond. To disclaim it,
\nTo be content with our measure, they say, is the law of our living.
\nRather to follow always and, baffled, still to go striving.
\nYes, it is true that we dash ourselves stark on a barrier appearing,
\nFall and are wounded. But He insists who is in us, the fearing –
\nConquers the grief. We resist; His temptations leap down compelling;
\nVirtue cheats us with noble names to a lofty rebelling.
\nFiercely His wrath and His jealousy strike down the rebel aspiring,
\nThick and persistent His might confronts our eager enquiring;
\nYet ’tis His strengths descend crying always, "Rebel, aspire!";
\nStill through the night He sends rays, to our bosoms a quenchless fire.
\nMost to our joys He sets limits, most with His pangs He perplexes;
\nYet when we faint it is He that spurs. Temptation vexes;
\nHonied a thousand whispers come, in the birds, in the breezes,
\nMoonlight, the voice of the streams; from hundreds of beautiful faces
\nAlways He cries to us, "Love me!", always He lures us to pleasure,
\nThen escapes and leaves anguish behind for our only treasure.
\nShall we not say then that joy is greatest, rapture His meaning?
\nThat which He most denies is His purpose? The hedges, the screening,
\nAre they not all His play? In our end we have rapture for ever
\nCareless of Time, with no fear of the end, with no need for endeavour.
\nWhat was the garden He built when the stars were first set in their places,
\nMan and woman together mid streams and in cloudless spaces,
\nNaked and innocent? Someone offered a fruit of derision,
\nKnowledge of good and evil, cleaving in God a division,
\nThough He who made all said, "It is good; I have fashioned
\nperfection."
\n"Nay, there is evil", someone whispered, "’tis screened from
\ndetection."
\nWisest he of the beasts of the field, one cunning and creeping.
\n"See it," he said, "be wise. You shall be as the gods are,
\nunsleeping,
\nThey who know all", and they ate. The roots of our being were shaken;
\nHatred and weeping and death at once trampled a world overtaken,
\nTerror and fleeing and wrath and shame and desire unsated;
\nCruelty stalked like a lion; Revenge and her brood were created.
\nOut to the desert He drove the rebellious. Flaming behind them
\nStreamed out the sword of His wrath; it followed, eager to find them,
\nStabbing at random. The pure and the evil, the strong and the tempted,
\nAll are confounded in punishment. Justly is no one exempted.
\nVirtuous? Yes, there are many; but who is there innocent? Toiling,
\nTherefore, we seek, but find not that Eden. Planting and spoiling,
\n"This is the garden," we say, "lo, the trees! and this is the
\nriver."
\n<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n


\n
\nPage \u2013 547<\/p>\n

<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nVainly!
\nRedeemers come, but none yet availed to deliver.
\nIs it not all His play? Is He Rudra only, the mighty?
\nWhose are the whispers of sweetness? Whence are the murmurs of pity?
\nWhy are we terrified then, cry out and draw back from the smiting?
\nBlows of a lover, perhaps, intended for fiercer inciting!
\nYes, but the cruelty, yes, but the empty pain we go on rueing!
\nEdges of sweetness, it may be, call to a swifter pursuing.
\nWas it not He in Brindavan? 0 woods divine to our yearning,
\nMemorable always! 0 flowers, 0 delight on the treetops burning!
\nGrasses His kine have grazed and crushed by His feet in the dancing!
\nYamuna flowing with sound, through the greenness always advancing!
\nYou unforgotten remind! For His flute with its sweetness ensnaring
\nSounds in our ears in the night and our souls of their teguments baring
\nHales them out naked and absolute, out to His woodlands eternal,
\nOut to His moonlit dances, His dalliance sweet and supernal,
\nAnd we go stumbling, maddened and thrilled, to His dreadful embraces
\nSlaves of His rapture to Brindavan crowded with amorous faces,
\nLuminous kine in the green glades seated soft-eyed grazing,
\nFlowers from the branches distressing us, moonbeams unearthly amazing,
\nYamuna flowing before us, laughing low with her voices,
\nBrindavan arching o’er us where Shyama sports and rejoices.
\nWhat though ’tis true that the river of Life through the valley of Peril
\nFlows! But the diamond shines on the cliffside, jacinth and beryl
\nGleam in the crannies, sapphire, smaragdus the roadway bejewel,
\nDown in the jaws of the savage mountains granite and cruel.
\nWho has not fathomed once all the voiceless throat of those mountains?
\nAlways the wide-pacing river of Life from its far-off fountains
\nFlows down mighty and broad, like a warhorse brought from its manger
\nArching its neck as it paces grand to the gorges of danger.
\nSometimes we hesitate, often start and would turn from the trial,
\nVainly; a fierce Inhabitant drives and brooks no denial.
\nHeadlong, o’ercome with a stridulant horror the river descending
\nShudders below into sunless depths among chasms unending,
\nAngry, afraid, white, foaming. A stony and monstrous resistance
\nMeets it, piling up stubborn limits, an iron insistence.
\nYet in the midst of our labour and weeping not utterly lonely
\nWander our steps, nor are terror and grief our portion only.
\nDo we not hear in the heart of the peril a flute go before us?
\nAre there not beckoning hands of the gods that insist and implore us?
\nPlains are beyond; there are hamlets and fields where the river rejoices
\n<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n


\n
\nPage \u2013 548<\/p>\n

<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nPacing
\nonce more with a quiet step and amical voices.
\nThere in a woodland red with berries and cool with the breezes, –
\nGreen are the leaves, all night long the heart of the nightingale eases
\nSweetly its burden of pity and sorrow, fragrant the flowers, –
\nThere in an arbour delightful I know we shall sport with the Hours,
\nLying on beds of lilies, hearing the bells of our cattle
\nTinkle, and drink red wine of our life and go forth to the battle
\nAnd unwounded return to our beautiful home by the waters,
\nPledge of our joys, rear tall strong sons and radiant daughters.
\nShall God know? Will His spies come down to our beautiful valley?
\nThey shall grow drunk with its grapes and wander in woodland and alley.
\nThere will His anger follow us, there will His lightnings immortal
\nWander around with their red eye of cruelty stabbing the portal?
\nYes, I shall fear then His play! I will sport with my dove from His highlands,
\nPleased with her laughter of bliss like a god in my Grecian islands.
\nDaughter of Heaven, break through to me, moonlike, mystic and gleaming.
\nCome through the margins of twilight, over the borders of dreaming;
\nVision bright that walkest crowned on the hills far above me,
\nVision of bliss, stoop down! Encircle me, madden me, love me.<\/p>\n

AHANA<\/p>\n

Voice of the sensuous mortal! heart of eternal longing!
\nThou who hast lived as in walls, thy soul with thy senses wronging!
\nBut I descend to thee. Fickle and terrible, sweet and deceiving,
\nPoison and nectar One has dispensed to thee, luring thee, leaving.
\nWe two together shall capture the flute and the player relentless.
\nSon of man, thou hast crowned thy life with flowers that are scentless,
\nChased the delights that wound. But I come and the darkness shall sunder.
\nLo, I come and behind me knowledge descends and with thunder
\nFilling the spaces Strength the Angel bears on his bosom
\nJoy to thy arms. Thou shalt look on her face like a child’s or a blossom,
\nInnocent, free as in Eden of old, not afraid of her playing.
\nPain was not meant for ever, hearts were not made but for slaying.
\nThou shalt not suffer always nor cry to me, lured and forsaken.
\nI have a snare for His footsteps, I have a chain for Him taken.
\nCome then to Brindavan, soul of the joyous; faster and faster
\nFollow the dance I shall teach thee with Shyama for slave and for master, –
\nFollow the notes of the flute with a soul aware and exulting,
\nTrample Delight that submits and crouch to a sweetness insulting.
\nThou shalt know what the dance meant, fathom the song and the singer,
\n<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n


\n
\nPage \u2013 549<\/p>\n

<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nHear
\nbehind thunder its rhythms, touched by lightning thrill to His finger,
\nBrindavan’s rustle shall understand and Yamuna’s laughter,
\nTake thy place in the Ras and thy share of the ecstasy after.
\n<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n


\n
\nPage \u2013 550<\/p>\n

<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

\n

 <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  The Descent of Ahana* AHANA   Strayed from the roads of Time, far-couched on the void I have slumbered; Centuries passed me unnoticed, millenniums…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-05-collected-poems-volume-05","wpcat-32-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1439\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}