The Vedantin's Prayer
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.
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!
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Rebirth
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.
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;
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.
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Parabrahman
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,
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.
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.
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God
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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The Fear of Death
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.
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Seasons
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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A Child's Imagination
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.
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Appeal
Thy youth is but a noon, of night take heed,—
A noon that is a fragment of a day,
And the swift eve all sweet things bears away,
All sweet things and all bitter, rose and weed.
For others’ bliss who lives, he lives indeed.
But thou art pitiful and ruth shouldst know.
I bid thee trifle not with fatal love,
But save our pride and dear one, O my dove,
And heaven and earth and the nether world below
Shall only with thy praises peopled grow.
Life is a bliss that cannot long abide,
But while thou livest, love. For love the sky
Was founded, earth upheaved from the deep cry
Of waters, and by love is sweetly tied
The golden cordage of our youth and pride.
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Life and Death
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.
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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.
I hold the sky
Together and upbear the teeming earth.
I was the eternal thinker at my birth
And shall be, though I die.
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Karma (Radha's Complaint)
Love, but my words are vain as air!
In my sweet joyous youth, a heart untried,
Thou tookst me in Love’s sudden snare,
Thou wouldst not let me in my home abide.
And now I have nought else to try,
But I will make my soul one strong desire
And into Ocean leaping die:
So shall my heart be cooled of all its fire.
Die and be born to life again
As Nanda’s son, the joy of Braja’s girls,
And I will make thee Radha then,
A laughing child’s face set with lovely curls.
Then I will love thee and then leave;
Under the codome’s boughs when thou goest by
Bound to the water morn or eve,
Lean on that tree fluting melodiously.
Thou shalt hear me and fall at sight
Under my charm; my voice shall wholly move
Thy simple girl’s heart to delight;
Then shalt thou know the bitterness of love.
(From an old Bengali poem)
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Revelation
Someone leaping from the rocks
Past me ran with wind-blown locks
Like a startled bright surmise
Visible to mortal eyes,—
Just a cheek of frightened rose
That with sudden beauty glows,
Just a footstep like the wind
And a hurried glance behind,
And then nothing,—as a thought
Escapes the mind ere it is caught.
Someone of the heavenly rout
From behind the veil ran out.
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To the Sea
O grey wild sea,
Thou hast a message, thunderer, for me.
Their huge wide backs
Thy monstrous billows raise, abysmal cracks
Dug deep between.
One pale boat flutters over them, hardly seen.
I hear thy roar
Call me, “Why dost thou linger on the shore
With fearful eyes
Watching my tops visit their foam-washed skies?
This trivial boat
Dares my vast battering billows and can float.
Death if it find,
Are there not many thousands left behind?
Dare my wide roar,
Nor cling like cowards to the easy shore.
Come down and know
What rapture lives in danger and o’erthrow.”
Yes, thou great sea,
I am more mighty and outbillow thee.
On thy tops I rise;
‘Tis an excuse to dally with the skies.
I sink below
The bottom of the clamorous world to know.
On the safe land
To linger is to lose what God has planned
For man’s wide soul,
Who set eternal godhead for its goal.
Therefore He arrayed
Danger and difficulty like seas and made
Pain and defeat,
And put His giant snares around our feet.
The cloud He informs
With thunder and assails us with His storms,
That man may grow
King over pain and victor of o’erthrow
Matching his great
Unconquerable soul with adverse Fate.
Take me, be
My way to climb the heavens, thou rude great sea.
I will seize thy mane,
O lion, I will tame thee and disdain;
Or else below
Into thy salt abysmal caverns go,
Receive thy weight
Upon me and be stubborn as my Fate.
I come, O Sea,
To measure my enormous self with thee.
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Immortal Love
If I had wooed thee for thy colour rare,
Cherished the rose in thee
Or wealth of Nature’s brilliants in thy hair,
O woman fair,
My love might cease to be.
Or, had I sought thee for thy virtuous youth
And tender yearning speech,
Thy swift compassion and deliberate truth,
O heart of ruth,
Time might pursue, might reach.
But I have loved thee for thyself indeed
And with myself have snared;
Immortal to immortal I made speed.
Change I exceed
And am for Time prepared.
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O love, what more shall I, shall Radha speak,
Since mortal words are weak?
In life, in death,
In being and in breath
No other lord but thee can Radha seek.
About thy feet the mighty net is wound
Wherein my soul they bound;
Myself resigned
To servitude my mind;
My heart than thine no sweeter slavery found.
I, Radha, thought; through the three worlds my gaze
I sent in wild amaze;
I was alone.
None called me “Radha!”, none;
I saw no hand to clasp, no friendly face.
I sought my father’s house; my father’s sight
Was empty of delight;
No tender friend
Her loving voice would lend;
My cry came back unanswered from the night.
Therefore to this sweet sanctuary I brought
My chilled and shuddering thought.
Ah, suffer, sweet,
To thy most faultless feet
That I should cling unchid; ah, spurn me not!
Spurn me not, dear, from thy beloved breast,
A woman weak, unblest.
Thus let me cling,
Thus, thus about my king
And thus remain caressing and caressed.
I, Radha, thought; without my life’s sweet lord,
—Strike now thy mightiest chord—
I had no power
To live one simple hour;
His absence slew my soul as with a sword.
If one brief moment steal thee from mine eyes,
My heart within me dies.
As girls who keep
The treasures of the deep,
I string thee round my neck and on my bosom prize.
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What is this talk of slayer and of slain?
Swords are not sharp to slay nor floods assuage
This flaming soul. Mortality and pain
Are mere conventions of a mightier stage.
As when a hero by his doom pursued
Falls like a pillar of the huge world uptorn
Shaking the hearts of men and awe-imbued,
Silent the audience sits or weeps forlorn,
Meanwhile behind the stage the actor sighs
Deep-lunged relief, puts off what he has been
And talks with friends that waited or from the flies
Watches the quiet of the closing scene,
Even so the unwounded spirits of the slain
Beyond our vision passing live again.
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To Weep because a Glorious Sun
To weep because a glorious sun has set
Which the next morn shall gild the east again,
To mourn that mighty strengths must yield to fate
Which by that fall a double force attain,
To shrink from pain without whose friendly strife
Joy could not be, to make a terror of death
Who smiling beckons us to farther life
And is a bridge for the persistent breath;
Despair and anguish and the tragic grief
Of dry set eyes or such disastrous tears
As rend the heart though meant for its relief
And all man’s ghastly company of fears
Are born of folly that believes this span
Of brittle life can limit immortal man.
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The Just Man
Where is the man whom hope nor fear can move?
Him the wise Gods approve.
The man divine of motive pure and steadfast will
Unbent to ill,
Whose way is plain nor swerves for power or gold
The high, straight path to hold:—
Him only wise the wise Gods deem, him pure of lust;
Him only just.
Tho’ men give rubies, tho’ they bring a prize
Sweeter than Helen’s eyes—
Yea, costlier things than these things were, they shall not win
That man to sin.
Tho’ the strong lords of earth his doom desire,
He shall not heed their ire,
Nor shall the numerous commons’ stormy voice compel
His heart nor quell.
Tho’ Ocean all her purple pride unroll,
It stirs, not shakes his soul.
He sees the billows lift their cowled heads on high
With undimmed eye.
Pure fields he sees and groves of calm delight;
He turns into the night.
Hell is before; the swords await him; friends betray;
He holds his way.
He shall not fear tho’ heaven in lightnings fall
Nor thunder’s furious call,
Nor earthquake nor the sea: tho’ fire, tho’ flood assail,
He shall not quail.
Tho’ God tear out the heavens like a page
And break the hills for rage,
Blot out the sun from being and all the great stars quench,
He will not blench.
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A Doubt
Many boons the new years make us
But the old world’s gifts were three,
Dove of Cypris, wine of Bacchus,
Pan’s sweet pipe in Sicily.
Love, wine, song, the core of living
Sweetest, oldest, musicalest.
If at end of forward striving
These, Life’s first, proved also best?
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I have a Hundred Lives
I have a hundred lives before me yet
To grasp thee in, O spirit ethereal,
Be sure I will with heart insatiate
Pursue thee like a hunter through them all.
Thou yet shalt turn back on the eternal way
And with awakened vision watch me come
Smiling a little at errors past, and lay
Thy eager hand in mine, its proper home.
Meanwhile made happy by thy happiness
I shall approach thee in things and people dear
And in thy spirit’s motions half-possess
Loving what thou hast loved, shall feel thee near,
Until I lay my hands on thee indeed
Somewhere among the stars, as ‘twas decreed.
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