Golden Gleanings

To R.

The repetition of thy gracious years

Brings back once more thy natal morn.

Upon the crest of youth thy life appears,—

A wave upborne.

Amid the hundreds thronging Ocean’s floor

A wave upon the crowded sea

With regular rhythm pushing towards the shore

Our life must be.

The power that moves it is the Ocean’s force

Invincible, eternal, free,

And by that impulse it pursues its course

Inevitably.

We, too, by the Eternal Might are led

To whatsoever goal He wills.

Our helm He grasps, our generous sail outspread

His strong breath fills.

Exulting in the grace and strength of youth

Pursue the Ocean’s distant bound,

Trusting the Pilot’s voice, the Master’s ruth

That rings us round.

Rejoice and fear not for the waves that swell,

The storms that thunder, winds that sweep;

Always our Captain holds the rudder well,

He does not sleep.

If in the trough of the enormous sea

Thou canst not find the sky for spray,

Fear never, for our Sun is there with thee

By night and day.

Even those who sink in the victorious flood,

Where do they sink? Into His breast.

He who to some gives victory, joy and good,

To some gives rest.

But thou, look to the radiant days that wait

Beyond the driving rain and storm.

I have seen the vision of a happier fate

Brightening thy form.

Confident of His grace, expect His will;

Let Him lead; though hidden be the bourne,

See Him in all that happens; that fulfil

For which thou wert born.

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Transiit, Non Periit

Not in annihilation lost, nor given

To darkness art thou fled from us and light,

O strong and sentient spirit; no mere heaven

Of ancient joys, no silence eremite

Received thee; but the omnipresent Thought

Of which thou wast a part and earthly hour,

Took back its gift. Into that splendour caught

Thou hast not lost thy special brightness. Power

Remains with thee and the old genial force

Unseen for blinding light, not darkly lurks:

As when a sacred river in its course

Dives into ocean, there its strength abides

Not less because with vastness wed and works

Unnoticed in the grandeur of the tides.

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Perfect thy Motion

Perfect thy motion ever within me,

Master of mind.

Grey of the brain, flash of the lightning,

Brilliant and blind,

These thou linkest, the world to mould,

Writing the thought in a scroll of gold

Violet lined.

Tablet of brain thou hast made for thy writing,

Master divine.

Calmly thou writest or full of thy grandeur

Flushed as with wine.

Then with a laugh thou erasest the scroll,

Bringing another, like waves that roll

And sink supine.

Link: https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2/perfect-thy-motion

Reading By Tara Jauhar

Evening

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.

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Kama

O desolations vast, O seas of space

Unpeopled, realms of an unfertile light,

Grow multitudinous with living forms,

Enamoured of desire! I send My breath

Into the heart of being, and the storm

Of sweet attraction shall break up its calm

With quivering passionate intensity

And silence change to a melodious cry,

And all the world be rose. Out of My heart

Suns shall flame up into the listless void,

And the stars wheel in magic dances round

Weaving the web of mortal life. For I

Am love, am passion; I create the world.

I am the only Brahma. My desire

Takes many forms; I change and wheel and race,

And with Me runs creation. I preserve,

For I am Love. I weary of Myself,

And the world circles back into the Vast.

Delight and laughter walking hand in hand

Go with Me, and I play with grief and pain.

I am the dance of Krishna, I the dance

Of Kálí . Might and majesty are Mine,

And yet I make the heart a child at play,

The soul of things a woman full of bliss.

Hunger and Thirst, arise and make the world!

Delight, go down and give it strength to live!

O Ether, change! O Breath of things, grow full

Of the perpetual whirl! Break out, O Fire,

In seas of magic colour, infinite waves

Of rainbow light! Thou, liquid element,

Be sap, be taste in all created things

To please the senses. Thou, O solid earth,

Enter into all life, support the worlds.

I send forth Joy to lure the hearts of men,

I send forth Law to harmonise and rule.

And when these things are done, when men have learned

My beauty, My desirability, My bliss,

I will conceal Myself from their desire

And make this rule of the eternal chase,

“They who abandon Me, shall to all time

Clasp and possess; they who pursue, shall lose.”

Read Online: https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2/kama

On the Mountains

Immense retreats of silence and of gloom,

Hills of a sterile grandeur, rocks that sublime

In bareness seek the blue sky’s infinite room

With their coeval snows untouched by Time!

I seek your solemn spaces! Let me at last

Forgotten of thought through days immemorable

Voiceless and needless keep your refuge vast,

Growing into the peace in which I dwell.

For like that Soul unmade you seem to brood

Who sees all things emerge but none creates,

Watching the ages from His solitude,

Lone, unconcerned, remote. You to all Fates

Offer an unchanged heart, unmoved abide,

Wordless, acceptant, sovereignly still.

There is a soul in us as silent, wide,

Mere, uncreative, imperturbable.

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Suddenly Out from the Wonderful East

Suddenly out from the wonderful East like a woman exulting

Dawn stepped forth with a smile on her lips, and the glory of morning

Hovered over the hills; then sweet grew air with the breezes,

Sweet and keen as a wild swift virgin; the wind walked blithely,

Low was the voice of the leaves as they rustled and talked with the river,

Ganges, the sacred river. Down from the northlands crowding,

Touching the steps of the ghauts with the silver tips of their fingers

Lightly the waters ran and talked to each other of sunshine,

Lightly they laughed. But high on his stake impaled by the roadway

Hung Mandavya the mighty in marble deep meditation,

Sepulchred, dumb; on his either side were the thieves, immobile.

They were dead, made free from cruelty, ceasing from anguish,

And forgetting the thirst. But past them Ganges the mighty,

First of the streams of the earth, our Mother, remembering the ages,

Poured to the sea.

Early at dawn by her ghauts the women of Mithila gathered.

There they filled their gurgling jars, or gilding the Ganges

Bathed in her waters and laughed as they bathed there clamouring, dashing

Dew of her coolness in eyes of each other: the banks called sweetly

Mad with the musical laughter of girls and joy of their crying,

Low melodious cries. As when in a wood on the hillsides

Thousands of bulbuls flitting and calling, eating the wild plums,

Filling the ear with sweetness carry from treetop to treetop

Vermeil of crest and scarlet of tail and small brown bodies

Flitting and calling, calling and flitting, full of sweet clamour,

Full of the wine of life, even such was the sweetness and clamour,

Women bathing close by the ghauts of the radiant Ganges,

Golden-limbed or white or darker than olives when ripest,

Lovely of face or of mood, but all sweethearted and happy

Aryan women. One there seemed of another moulding

Who was aloof from the crowd and the chaos of cheerful faces.

She at one side of the stairway slowly like one half-musing

Bathed there, hiding her face in the deep cool bosom of waters,

Losing herself in Ganges, or let its pearl drops dribble

Quietly down through the mystical night of her tresses on gleaming

Shoulders, betwixt her great breasts noble as hills at noontide

Back to their hurrying home: nor heeded the laughter near her.

Only at times when the clamour grew high, she would look up smiling

Such a slow sweet serious smile as a tender mother

Watching her children at play might smile forgetting the sorrow

Down in her own still patient heart where the deep tears gathered

Swell unwept, till they turn to a sea of sorrowful pity.

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To the Ganges

Hearken, Ganges, hearken, thou that sweepest golden to the sea,

Hearken, Mother, to my voice.

From the feet of Hari with thy waters pure thou leapest free,

Waters colder-pure than ice.

On Himaloy’s grandiose summits upright in his cirque of stones

Shiva sits in breathless air,

Where the outcast seeks his refuge, where the demon army moans,

Ganges erring through his hair.

Down the snowwhite mountains speeding, the immortal peaks and cold,

Crowd thy waves untouched by man.

From Gungotry through the valleys next their icy tops were rolled,

Bursting through Shivadry ran.

In Benares’ stainless city by defilement undefiled

Ghauts and temples lightly touched

With thy fingers as thou ranst, laughed low in pureness like a child

To his mother’s bosom clutched.

Where the steps of Rama wandered, where the feet of Krishna came,

There thou flowest, there thy hand

Clasps us, Bhagirathie, Jahnavie or Gunga, and thy name

Holier makes the Aryans’ land.

But thou leavest Aryavurtha, but thou leapest to the seas

In thy hundred mighty streams;

Nor in the unquiet Ocean vast thy grandiose journeyings cease,

Mother, say thy children’s dreams.

Down thou plungest through the Ocean, far beneath its oozy bed

In Patala’s leaden gloom

Moaning o’er her children’s pain our mother, Ganges of the dead,

Leads our wandering spirits home.

Mighty with the mighty still thou dwelledst, goddess high and pure;

Iron Bhîshma was thy son,

Who against ten thousand rushing chariots could in war endure;

Many heroes fled from one.

Devavrath the mighty, Bhîshma with his oath of iron power,

Smilingly who gave up full

Joy of human life and empire, that his father’s wish might flower

And his father’s son might rule.

Who were these that thronged thereafter? wherefore came these puny hearts

Apter for the cringing slave,

Wrangling, selfish, weak and treacherous, vendors of their nobler parts,

Sorry food for pyre and grave?

O but these are men of mind not yet with Europe’s brutal mood alloyed,

Poets singing in their chains,

Preachers teaching manly slavery, speakers thundering in the void.

Motley wear these men of brains!

Well it is for hound and watchdog fawning at a master’s feet,

Cringing, of the whip afraid!

Well it is for linnet caged to make with song his slavery sweet.

Man for other ends was made.

Man the arrogant, the splendid, man the mighty wise and strong,

Born to rule the peopled earth,

Shall he bear the alien’s insult, shall he brook the tyrant’s wrong

Like a thing of meaner birth?

Sreepoor in the east of Chand and Kédar, bright with Mogul blood,

And the Kings of Aracan

And the Atlantic pirates helped that hue,—its ruined glory flood

Kîrtinasha’s waters wan.

Buried are our cities; fallen the apexed dome, the Indian arch;

In Chitore the jackals crowd:

Krishna’s Dwarca sleeps for ever, o’er its ruined bastions march

All the Oceans thundering loud.

Still, yet still the fire of Kali on her ancient altar burns

Smouldering under smoky pall,

And the deep heart of her peoples to their Mighty Mother turns,

Listening for her Titan call.

Yet Pratapaditya’s great fierce spirit shall in might awake

In Jessore he loved and made,

Sitaram the good and mighty for his well-loved people’s sake

Leave the stillness and the shade.

And Bengal the wide and ancient where the Senas swayed of old

Up to far Benares pure,

She shall lead the Aryan peoples to the mighty doom foretold

And her glory shall endure.

By her heart of quick emotion, by her brain of living fire,

By her vibrant speech and great,

She shall lead them, they shall see their destiny in her warm desire

Opening all the doors of Fate.

By the shores of Brahmaputra or where Ganges nears the sea,

Even now a flame is born

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Vision

Who art thou that roamest

Over mountains dim

In the haunts of evening,

Sister of the gleam!

Whiter than the jasmines,

Roses dream of thee;

Softly with the violets

How thine eyes agree!

As thy raven tresses

Night is not so black,

From thy moonbright shoulders

Floating dimly back.

Feet upon the hilltops,

Lilies of delight,

With their far-off radiance

Tinge the evening bright.

In the vesper calmness

Lightly like a dove,

With thy careless eyelids

Confident of love,

As of old thou comest

Down the mountains far,

Smiling from what gardens,

Glowing from what star?

Racing from the hilltops

Like a brilliant stream,

Burning in the valleys

Marble-bright of limb,

Singing in the orchards

When the shadows fall,

With thy crooning anklets

To my heart that call,

By the darkening window

Like a slender fire,

With the night behind thee,

Daughter of desire!

Open wide the doorway,

Bid my love come in

With the night behind her

And the dawn within.

Take, O radiant fingers,

Heart and hands of me,

Hide them in thy bosom,

O felicity!

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The Sea at Night

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

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.

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