And well I know that when the fragile petals Fall softly, ere the first green leaves appear, (Ah, for these last few days, God, grant me patience,) Since Delight is not, I shall not be, here!
Unforgotten
Do you ever think of me? you who died Ere our Youth's first fervour chilled, With your soft eyes and your pulses stilled Lying alone, aside, Do you ever think of me, left in the light, From the endless calm of your dawnless night?
I am faithful always: I do not say That the lips which thrilled to your lips of old To lesser kisses are always cold; Had you wished for this in its narrow sense Our love perhaps had been less intense; But as we held faithfulness, you and I, I am faithful always, as you who lie, Asleep for ever, beneath the grass, While the days and nights and the seasons pass,-- Pass away.
I keep your memory near my heart, My brilliant, beautiful guiding Star, Till long life over, I too depart To the infinite night where perhaps you are.
Oh, are you anywhere? Loved so well! I would rather know you alive in Hell Than think your beauty is nothing now, With its deep dark eyes and tranquil brow Where the hair fell softly. Can this be true That nothing, nowhere, exists of you? Nothing, nowhere, oh, loved so well I have _never_ forgotten. Do you still keep Thoughts of me through your dreamless sleep?
Oh, gone from me! lost in Eternal Night, Lost Star of light, Risen splendidly, set so soon, Through the weariness of life's afternoon I dream of your memory yet. My loved and lost, whom I could not save, My youth went down with you to the grave, Though other planets and stars may rise, I dream of your soft and sorrowful eyes And I cannot forget.
Song of Faiz Ulla
Just at the time when Jasmins bloom, most sweetly in the summer weather, Lost in the scented Jungle gloom, one sultry night we spent together We, Love and Night, together blent, a Trinity of tranced content.
Yet, while your lips were wholly mine, to kiss, to drink from, to caress, We heard some far-off faint distress; harsh drop of poison in sweet wine Lessening the fulness of delight,-- Some quivering note of human pain, Which rose and fell and rose again, in plaintive sobs throughout the night,
Spoiling the perfumed, moonless hours We spent among the Jasmin flowers.
Story of Lilavanti
They lay the slender body down With all its wealth of wetted hair, Only a daughter of the town, But very young and slight and fair.
The eyes, whose light one cannot see, Are sombre doubtless, like the tresses, The mouth's soft curvings seem to be A roseate series of caresses.
And where the skin has all but dried (The air is sultry in the room) Upon her breast and either side, It shows a soft and amber bloom.
By women here, who knew her life, A leper husband, I am told, Took all this loveliness to wife When it was barely ten years old.
And when the child in shocked dismay Fled from the hated husband's care He caught and tied her, so they say, Down to his bedside by her hair.
To some low quarter of the town, Escaped a second time, she flew; Her beauty brought her great renown And many lovers here she knew,
When, as the mystic Eastern night With purple shadow filled the air, Behind her window framed in light, She sat with jasmin in her hair.
At last she loved a youth, who chose To keep this wild flower for his own, He in his garden set his rose Where it might bloom for him alone.
Cholera came; her lover died, Want drove her to the streets again, And women found her there, who tried To turn her beauty into gain.
But she who in those garden ways Had learnt of Love, would now no more Be bartered in the market place For silver, as in days before.
That former life she strove to change; She sold the silver off her arms, While all the world grew cold and strange To broken health and fading charms.
Till, finding lovers, but no friend, Nor any place to rest or hide, She grew despairing at the end, Slipped softly down a well and died.
And yet, how short, when all is said, This little life of love and tears! Her age, they say, beside her bed, To-day is only fifteen years.
The Garden by the Bridge
The Desert sands are heated, parched and dreary, The tigers rend alive their quivering prey In the near Jungle; here the kites rise, weary, Too gorged with living food to fly away.
All night the hungry jackals howl together Over the carrion in the river bed, Or seize some small soft thing of fur or feather Whose dying shrieks on the night air are shed.
I hear from yonder Temple in the distance Whose roof with obscene carven Gods is piled, Reiterated with a sad insistence Sobs of, perhaps, some immolated child.
Strange rites here, where the archway's shade is deeper, Are consummated in the river bed; Parias steal the rotten railway sleeper To burn the bodies of their cholera dead.
But yet, their lust, their hunger, cannot shame them Goaded by fierce desire, that flays and stings; Poor beasts, and poorer men. Nay, who shall blame them? Blame the Inherent Cruelty of Things.
The world is horrible and I am lonely, Let me rest here where yellow roses bloom And find forgetfulness, remembering only Your face beside me in the scented gloom.
Nay, do not shrink! I am not here for passion, I crave no love, only a little rest, Although I would my face lay, lover's fashion, Against the tender coolness of your breast.
I am so weary of the Curse of Living The endless, aimless torture, tumult, fears. Surely, if life were any God's free giving, He, seeing His gift, long since went blind with tears.
Seeing us; our fruitless strife, our futile praying, Our luckless Present and our bloodstained Past. Poor players, who make a trick or two in playing, But know that death _must_ win the game at last.
As round the Fowler, red with feathered slaughter, The little joyous lark, unconscious, sings,-- As the pink Lotus floats on azure water, Innocent of the mud from whence it springs.
You walk through life, unheeding all the sorrow, The fear and pain set close around your way, Meeting with hopeful eyes each gay to-morrow, Living with joy each hour of glad to-day.
I love to have you thus (nay, dear, lie quiet, How should these reverent fingers wrong your hair?) So calmly careless of the rush and riot That rages round is seething everywhere.
You do not understand. You think your beauty Does but inflame my senses to desire, Till all you hold as loyalty and duty, Is shrunk and shrivelled in the ardent fire.
You wrong me, wearied out with thought and grieving As though the whole world's sorrow eat my heart, I come to gaze upon your face believing Its beauty is as ointment to the smart.
Lie still and let me in my desolation Caress the soft loose hair a moment's span. Since Loveliness is Life's one Consolation, And love the only Lethe left to man.
Ah, give me here beneath the trees in flower, Beside the river where the fireflies pass, One little dusky, all consoling hour Lost in the shadow of the long grown grass
Give me, oh you whose arms are soft and slender, Whose eyes are nothing but one long caress, Against your heart, so innocent and tender, A little Love and some Forgetfulness.
Fate Knows no Tears
Just as the dawn of Love was breaking Across the weary world of grey, Just as my life once more was waking As roses waken late in May, Fate, blindly cruel and havoc-making, Stepped in and carried you away.
Memories have I none in keeping Of times I held you near my heart, Of dreams when we were near to weeping That dawn should bid us rise and part; Never, alas, I saw you sleeping With soft closed eyes and lips apart,
Breathing my name still through your dreaming.-- Ah! had you stayed, such things had been! But Fate, unheeding human scheming, Serenely reckless came between-- Fate with her cold eyes hard and gleaming Unseared by all the sorrow seen.
Ah! well-beloved, I never told you, I did not show in speech or song, How at the end I longed to fold you Close in my arms; so fierce and strong The longing grew to have and hold you, You, and you only, all life long.
They who know nothing call me fickle, Keen to pursue and loth to keep. Ah, could they see these tears that trickle From eyes erstwhile too proud to weep. Could see me, prone, beneath the sickle, While pain and sorrow stand and reap!