SRI AUROBINDO
Translations
from Sanskrit and Other Languages
Kumarasambhava
The Birth of the War-God
1
A God mid hills northern Himaloy rears
His snow-piled summits' dizzy majesties,
And in the eastern and the western seas
He bathes his giant sides; lain down appears
Measures the dreaming earth in an enormous ease.
2
Him, it is told, the living mountains made
A mighty calf of earth, the mother large,
When Meru of that milking had the charge
By Prithu bid, and jewels brilliant-rayed
Were brightly born and herbs on every mountain marge.
3
So is he in his infinite riches dressed
Not all his snows can slay that opulence.
As drowned in luminous floods the mark though dense
On the moon's argent disc; so faints oppressed
One fault mid crowding virtues fading from our sense.
4
Brightness of minerals on his peaks outspread
In their love-sports and in their dances gives
To heavenly nymphs adornment, which when drive
The split clouds across, those broken hues displayed
Like an untimely sunset's magic glories live.
5
Far down the clouds droop to his girdle-waist;
And to this low-hung plateaus' coolness won
The siddhas in soft shade repose, but run
Soon gleaming upwards by wild rains distressed
To unstained summits splendid with the veilless sun. 
6
Although unseen the reddened footprints blotted
By the new-fallen snows, the hunters know
The path their prey the mighty lions go;
For pearls from the slain elephants there clotted
Fallen from the hollow claws their dangerous passage show.
7
The birch-leaves on his slopes love-pages turn:
Like spots of age upon the tusky kings
Of liquid metal ink their letterings
Make crimsoned pages that with passion burn
Where heaven's divine Circes pen heart-moving things.
8
He fills the hollows of his bamboo trees
With the breeze rising from his deep ravines,
Breathes1 from his rocky mouths as if he means
To be tune-giver to the minstrelsies
Of high-voiced Kinnars chanting in his woodland glens.
9
His poplars by the brows of elephants
Shaken and rubbed loose forth their odorous cream;
And the sweet resin pours its trickling stream,
And wind on his high levels burdened pants
With fragrance making all the air a scented dream.
10
His grottoes are love-chambers in the night
For the stray forest-wanderer when he lies
Twined with his love, marrying with hers his sighs
And from the dim banks luminous herbs give light
Strange2 oilless lamps to their locked passion's ecstasies.
11
Himaloy's snows in frosted slabs distress
The delicate heels of his maned Kinnaris,
And yet for all their chilly path's unease
They change not their slow motion's swaying grace
For their burden of breasts and heavy hips.
12
He guards from the pursuing sun far hid
In his deep caves of gloom the fallen night
Afraid of the day's eyes of brilliant light:
Even on base things and low for refuge fled
High-crested souls shed love and kindly might.
13
The mountain yaks lift up their bushy tails
And with their lashing scatter gleamings round
White as the moonbeams on the rocky ground
They seem to fan their king, his parallels
Of symbolled monarchy more perfectly to found.
14
There in his glens upon his grottoed floors
When from her limbs is plucked the raiment fine
Of the Kinnar's shame-fast love, hanging come in
The concave clouds across the cavern doors;
Chance curtains shielding her bared3 loveliness divine.
15
Weary with tracking the wild deer for rest
The hunter bares his forehead to the fay
Breezes which sprinkle Ganges' cascade spray
Shaking the cedars on Himaloy's breast,
Gambolling with the proud peacock's gorgeous-plumed array.
16
Circling his mountains in its path below
The sun awakes with upward glittering wands
What still unplucked by the seven sages' hands
Remains of the bright lotuses that glow
In tarns upon his tops with heaven-kissing strands.
17
Because the Soma plant for sacrifice
He rears and for his strength4 upbearing Earth
The Lord of creatures gave to this great birth
His sacrificial share and ministries
And empire over all the mountains to his worth.
15. There rests the hunter weary of the chase
And bares his forehead to the breeze which comes
With spray of Ganges' cascades on its wings,
Scattering the peacock's gorgeous plumes abroad,
Shaking the cedars on Himaloy's breast.
16. In tarns upon its heaven-kissing tops
Immortal lilies bloom the shining hands
Of the Seven Sages pluck, a few still left
Awake with morn to the sun's upward beams
Circling those mountains on his lower path.
17. Because he rears for sacrifice the plant
Of honeyed wine, his sacred share fulfilled,
And for his many strengths upbearing Earth
The Father of the peoples' very hands
Crowned him the monarch of a million hills. 
18
Companion of Meru, their high floor
In equal wedlock to his mighty5 bed
The mind-born child of the world-fathers wed,
Mena whose wisdom the deep seers adore,
Stable and wise himself his stable race to spread.
19
Their joys of love were like themselves immense
And its long puissant ecstasies at last
Bore fruit, for in her womb a seed was cast
Bearing the banner of her youth intense
In moving beauty and charm to motherhood she passed.
20
Mainac she bore, the ocean's guest and friend,
Upon whose peaks the serpent-women roam,
Dwellers in their unsunned and cavernous home;
Mainac, whose sides though angry Indra rend
Feels not the anguish of the thunder's shock of doom.
(Incomplete)
18. In equal rites he to his mighty bed
The mind-born child of the world-fathers bore.
Companion fit of Meru their high home,
Stable of thought to stabilise his race,
Mena the wise he wed by seers adored.
19. Their joys of love were like themselves immense
And in long puissant ecstasy at last
Bore fruit; for in her womb his seed was thrown
And bearing like a banner with her youth's
Heart-moving beauty motherhood she crossed.
20. Mainac she bore, the guest of the great sea,
Upon whose peaks the serpent women sport
Who through the Titan slayer's wrath has shorn
His budding wings, felt not the fiery blow,
Shook not with anguish of the thunder's scars.
A God concealed in mountain majesty
Embodied to our cloudy physical sight
In snowy summits and green-gloried slopes,
To northward of the many-rivered land,
Measuring the earth in an enormous ease,
Immense Himaloy dwells6 and in the moan
Of eastern ocean and in western floods
Plunges his giant sides. Him once the hills
Imagined as the mighty calf of Earth
When the wideness milked her udders; gems brilliant-rayed
Were born and herbs on every mountain marge.
So in his infinite riches is he dressed,
Not all his snows can slay his opulence,
And though they chill the feet of heaven, her sons
Forget that fault mid7 all his crowding gifts,
As faints in luminous floods the gloomy mark
On the moon's argent disc; they choose his vales
For playground, his hill-peaks for divine homes.
Brightness of minerals on his rocks is spread
Which to the Apsaras give adorning hues
In their love-sports and in their dances; flung
On the split clouds in their brilliant colours ranged,
Like an untimely sunset's glories live.
Far down the clouds droop to his girdle-waist;
Then by the low-hung plateaus' coolness drawn
The siddhas in soft shade repose, but flee
Soon upward by wild driving rain distressed
To summits splendid in the veilless sun.
The hunter seeks for traces on his sides,
And though their reddened footprints are expunged
By the new-falling snows, yet can he find
The path his prey the mighty lions go;
For, it is told, pearls from slain elephants 
Are clotted, fallen from their hollow claws,
And tell their dangerous passage. When he rests
Tired with the chase and bares to winds his brow,
They come, fay-breezes dancing on the slopes,
Shaking the cedars on Himaloy's breast,
Scattering the peacock's gorgeous-plumed attire,
And with spray of Ganges' cascades on their wings
Sprinkling his hair. He makes the grottoed glens
His chambers of desire and in the night
When the strong forest-wanderer is lain
Twined with his love, marrying with hers his sighs,
The luminous herbs from the dim banks around
Strange8 oilless lamps, give light to see his joy.
Nor only earthly footsteps tread the grass,
Or mortal love finds there its happy scenes.
The birch-leaves of the hills love-pages are;
Like spots of age upon the tusky kings,
In ink of liquid metals letters strange
Make crimson signs, pages where passion burns
And divine Circes pen heart-moving things.
The Kinnars wander singing in his glades
He fills the hollows of his bamboo trees9
With the wind rising from his deep ravines,
And with a moaning and melodious sound
Breathes from his rocky mouths as if he meant
To flute,10 time-giver to their minstrelsies.
The delicate heels of the maned Kinnari
Are by his frosted slabs of snow distressed,
Yet for her burden of breasts and heavy hips
Can change not her slow motion's swaying grace
To escape the biting pathway's chill unease.
She too in grottoed caverns lies embraced.
When from her limbs is plucked the raiment fine
Of the Kinnar's shame-fast love, then hanging come
The concave clouds across the grotto doors
And make chance curtains against mortal eyes,
Shielding the naked goddess from our sight. 
The elephant-herds there wander: resinous trees
Shaken and rubbed by their afflicting brows
Loose down their odorous tears in creamy drops;
The winds upon the plateaus burdened pant
And make of all the air a scented dream.
The yaks are there; they lift their bushy tails
And in their lashings scatter gleamings white
As moonbeams shed upon the sleeping hills:
Brightly they seem to fan the mountain king.
He hides in his deep caves the hunted night
Fearful of the day's brilliant eyes. His peaks
Seem to outpeer the lower-circling sun,
Which sends its upward beams as if to wake
Immortal lilies in his tarns unplucked
By the seven sages in their starry march.
Such is Himaloy's greatness, such his strength
That seems to uplift to heaven the earth. He bears
The honey Soma plant upon his heights,
Of Godward symbols the exalted source.
He by the Master of sacrifice was crowned
The ancient monarch of a million hills.
In equal rites he to his giant bed
The mind-born child of the world-fathers bore.
The earthly comrade and the help fellow
Of Meru, their sublime celestial home,
Stable of soul, to make a stable race
Mena he wed whose wisdom seers adored.
Their joy of love was like themselves immense,
And in the wide felicitous lapse of time
Its long and puissant ecstasy bore fruit;
Bearing the banner of her unchanged youth
And beauty to charmed motherhood she crossed.
Mainac she bore, the guest of the deep seas,
Upon whose peaks the serpent women play,
Their jewelled tresses glittering through the gloom,
Race of a cavernous and monstrous world;
There fled when Indra tore the mountains' wings, 
His divine essence bore no cruel sign,11
Nor felt the anguish of the thunder's scars.12
Next to a nobler load her womb gave place;
For Daksha's daughter, Shiva's wife, the Lord
Of Being, in her angry will who left
Her body lifeless13 in her father's hall,
Sought in their mountain home a happier birth,
And by her in a trance profound of joy
Conceived was born of strong14 Himaloy's seed.
Out of the soul unseen the splendid child
Came like success with daring for its sire
And for its mother clear-eyed thought sublime.
Then were the regions subtle with delight,
Soft, pure, from cloud and stain; then heaven's shells
Blew sweetly, flowery rain came drifting down,
Earth answered to the rapture of the skies
And all her moving and unmoving life
Felt happiness because the Bride was born.
So the fair mother by this daughter shone
So that new beauty radiated its beams
As if a land of lapis lazuli
Torn by the thunder's voice shot suddenly forth
A jewelled sprouting from the mother bed.
Parvati was she called the mountain's child,
When love to love cried answer in her house
And to that sound she turned her lovely face,
But afterdays the great maternal name
Of Uma gave. On her as fair she grew
Her father banqueted his sateless look,
He felt himself a lamp fulfilled in light,
Like Heaven's silent path by Ganges voiceful made,
Like15 thought made glorious by a perfect word.
Like bees that winging come upon the wind
Among the infinite sweets of honeyed spring
Drawn to the mango-flower's delicious breast,
All eyes sought her.
Her little childlike form 
Increasing to new curves of loveliness,
She grew like the moon's arc from day to day.
Among her fair companions of delight
She built frail walls of heavenly Ganges' sands
Or ran to seize the tossing ball or pleased
With puppet children her maternal mind,
Absorbed in play, the mother of the worlds.
And easily too to her as if in play
All sciences and wisdoms crowding came
Out of her former life, like swans that haste
In autumn to a sacred river's shores;
They started from her mind as grow at night
Born from some luminous herb its glimmering rays.
To her child-body youth, a charm, arrived
Adorning every limb, a wine of joy
To intoxicate the heart, the eyes that gazed,
Shooting the arrows of love's curving bow.
Even as a painting grows beneath the hand
Of a great master, as the lotus opens
Its petals to the flatteries of the sun,
So into perfect roundness grew her limbs
And opened up sweet colour, form and light.
Her feet that threw at every step a rose
Upon the earth, like reddened lilies seemed16
Moving17 from spot to spot their petalled bloom;
Her motion studied from the queenly swans
Its18 wanton swaying musically timed
The sweet-voiced anklets' murmurous refrain.
From moulded knee to ankle the supreme
Divinely lessening curve so lovely was,
It looked as if on this alone were spent
All her Creator's cunning and well the rest
Might tax his labour to build half such grace,
Yet was that miracle accomplished.
Soft
In roundness, warm in their smooth sweep her thighs
Were without parallel in Nature's work.
The greatness of her hips on which life's girdle
Had found its ample rest deserved already
The lap of divine love where she alone
Might hope one day embosomed by god to lie.
Deep was her navel's hollow where wound in
Above her19 raiment's knot that tender line
Of down as slight as the dark ray shot up
From the blue jewel central in her zone.
Her waist was like an altar's middle small
And there the triple stair of love was built.
Twin breasts large, lovely pale with darkened paps
That could not allow the slender lotus thread
A passage, on whose either side there waited
Softer than delicatest flowers the arms
Which Love victorious in defeat would find
His chains to bind down the Eternal's neck.
Her throat adorned the necklace which it wore:
Its sweep and undulation to the breast
Outmatched the gleaming roundness of its gems.
Above all this her marvellous face where met
The golden mother of beauty and delight
At once the graces of her lotus throne
And the soft lashes of the moon. The smile
Parting the rosy sweetness of her lips
Like a white flower across a ruddy leaf
Or pearls that sever lines of coral. Noble
Her speech dropped nectar from a liquid voice
To which the coïl's call seemed rude and harsh
And sob of smitten lyres a tuneless sound.
She had exchanged with the wild woodland deer
The startled glance of her long lovely eyes
Fluttering like a blue lotus in the wind.
The pencilled long line of her arching brows
Made vain the beauty of Love's bow. Her hair's
Tossed masses put voluptuously to shame
The mane of lions and the drift of clouds.
To see20 all beauty in a little space
He who created all this wondrous world
Had fashioned only her. Throned in her limbs
All possibilities of loveliness
Have crowded to their fair attractive seat
And now the artist eyes that scan all things
Saw every symbol and sweet parallel
Of beauty only realised in her.
Then was he satisfied and loved his work.
The sages ranging at their will the stars
Saw her and knew that this indeed was she
Who must become by love the beautiful half
Of the fair body of the Lord and all
His heart. This from the seers of future things
Her father heard and his high hope renounced
All other but the greatest for her spouse.
Nor dared yet to anticipate the divine mind
He dared not, but remained like a great soul
Curbing the impatience of its godlike hopes,
The silent sentinel of its destined hour.
Prepared by Time for her approaching Lord
She waited like a sacrifice for the fire.
But he, the spirit of the world, forsaken
By that first body of the mother of all,
Nor to her second birth yet wed,21 remained22
Alone and passionless and unespoused,23
The Master of the animal life absorbed
In dreamings, wandering with his demon hordes
Desireless in the blind desire of things.
At length he ceased; like sculptured marble still
To meditation was his spirit turned,
Clothed in the skins of beasts, with ashes smeared
He sat a silent shape upon the hills.
Below him curved Himadri's slope; a soil
With fragrance of the musk deer odorous
Was round him, where the awful splendour mused
Mid the cedars sprinkled with the sacred dew
Of Ganges, softly murmuring their chants
In strains subdued the Kinnar minstrels sang.
On the oil-filled slabs among the resinous herbs
His grisly hosts sat down, their bodies stained
With mineral unguents, bark upon their limbs;
Ill-shaped they were and their tremendous hands
Around their ears had wreathed the hill-side's flowers.
On the white rocks compact of frozen snow,
The great bull voicing loud immortal pride
Pawed with his hoof the argent soil to dust,
Alarmed the bisons fled his gaze, he bellowed
Impatient of the mountain lion's roar.
Concentrating his world-vast energies
Amid them built his daily form of fire,24
He who gives all austerities their fruit,
In what impenetrable and deep desire?
And though to him the worship even of gods
Is negligible, worship the mountain gave
And gave his daughter the Great Soul to serve.
And though to remote trance near beauty is
A danger, the Great Soul accepted her.
Surrounded by all sweetness in the world
He can be passionless who is creation's king.25
She brought him daily offering of flowers
And holy water morn and noon and eve
And swept the altar of the divine fire
And heaped his altar seat of sacred grass,
Then bending over his feet her falling locks,
Drowned all her soft fatigue of gentle hours
In the cool moonbeams from the Eternal's head.
So had they met on summits of the world 
Like the Spirit and its unwakened force.
Near were they now, yet to each other unknown,
He meditating, she in service bowed.
Closing awhile her vast and shining lids,
Fate over them paused suspended on the hills.
A God concealed in mountain majesty,
Embodied to our cloudy physical sight
In dizzy summits and green-gloried slopes,
Measuring the earth in an enormous ease,
Immense Himaloy dwells and in the moan
Of western waters and in eastern floods
Plunges his hidden spurs. Such is his strength26
High-piled or thousand-crested is his look
That with the scaling greatness of his peaks
He seems to uplift to heaven our prostrate soil.
He mounts from the green luxury of his vales,
Ambitious of the skies; naked and lost
The virgin chill immensity of snow
Covers the breathless spirit of his heights.
To snows his savage pines aspire; the birch
And all the hardy brotherhood which climb
Against the angry muttering of the winds,
Challenge the dangerous air in which they live.
He is sated with the silence of the stars:
Lower he dips into life's beauty, far
Below he hears the cascades, now he clothes
His rugged sides the gentle breezes kiss
With soft grass and the gold and silver fern.
Holding upon her breast the hill-god's feet
Earth in her tresses hides his giant knees.
Over lakes of mighty sleep, where fountains lapse,
Dreaming, and by the noise of waterfalls,
In an unspoken solitary joy
He listens to her chant. The distant hills
Imagined him the calf to which she lows
When the wideness milks her udders and (Meru is near
The heavenly unseen height; like visible hints
Of his great subtle growths of peace and joy 
His dreaming woods arise;) gems brilliant-rayed
She yields and herbs on every mountain marge.
He gives his colours to the Apsara's grace.
The smooth gold of her limbs with harder hues
Stolen from his mineral rocks she loves to stain.
Reflections of those brilliant colourings
Oft on the hangings of the cloudy heavens
Like an untimely sunset's glories lie.27
In such warm infinite riches is he dressed
His fire of life from his cold heights of thought
The great snows cannot slay its opulence.
Though stark they chill the feet of heaven, her sons
Forgive the fault amid a throng of joys
As faints from our charmed sense in luminous floods
The gloomy mark28 on the moon's argent disk,
They have forgot his chill severity
In sweetness which escapes from him in life.
For as from passion of some austere soul
Delight and love have stolen to rapturous birth,
From ice-born waters his delicious vales
Are fed. Indulgent like the smile of God,
White grandeurs overlook wild green romance.
He keeps his summits for immortal steps,
The life of man upon his happy slopes
Roams wild and bare and free, the life of gods
Prone from the unattainable summits climbs
Down the rude greatness of his huge rock-park
As if rejecting the glory of its veils
It peeps out from the subtle gleam of air,
Visible to man by waterfall and glade,
And finds us in the hush of sleeping woods,
And meets us with low whisperings in the night
Of their surrounding presence unaware.
Chasing the dreadful wanderers of the hill
The hunter seeks for traces on his side,
He, though soft-falling innocent snows weep off
The cruelty of their red footprints, finds
The path his prey the mighty lions go.
For glittering pearls from the felled elephants
Lain clotted, dropping from the hollow claws
Betray29 their dangerous passage. When he sits
Tired of the hunt on a slain poplar's base
And bares to winds the weariness of his brow
They come fay-breezes dancing on the slopes,
Scattering the peacock's gorgeous-plumed attire,
Shaking the cedars on Himaloy's breast,
With spray from Ganges' cascades on their wings,
To kiss30 the wind-blown tangles of his hair,
Sprinkling their coolness on his soul. He has made
The grottoed glens his chambers of desire,
He has packed their dumbness with his passionate bliss;
Stone witnesses of ecstasy they sleep.
And wonderful luminous herbs from night's dim banks
Give light to see the joy those thrilled rocks keep
When the strong forest-wanderer is lain
Twined with his love, marrying with hers his sighs,
Moved to desire in their stony dreams.
Nor only human footsteps tread the grass
Upon his slopes, nor only mortal love
Finds there the lovely setting of the hills
Amid the broken caverns and the trees,
In the weird moonlight pouring from the clouds
And the clear sunlight glancing from the pines
A wandering choir, a flash of unseen forms,
Go sweeping sometimes they and leave our hearts
Startled with hintings of some greater life,
The Kinnar passes singing in his glades.
Then stirred to repeat the echoes of their voice,31
He fills the hollows of his bamboo stems
With the wind sobbing from the deep ravines
And in a moaning and melodious sound
Breathes from his rocky mouths, as if he meant
To flute, tune-giver to wild minstrelsies.
The delicate heels of the maned Kinnari
Are with his frosted slabs of snow distressed.
But with the large load of her breasts and hips
To escape the biting pathway's chill unease
She is forbidden: she must not break the grace
Of her slow32 motion's tardy rich appeal.
She too in grottoed caverns lies embraced,
Forced from the shame-fast sweetness of her limbs
The subtle raiment leaves her fainting hands
To give her tremulous beauty to the gaze
Of her eternal lover. But thick clouds
Stoop hastily bowed to the rocky doors
And hang chance curtains against mortal eyes,
Shielding the naked goddess from our sight.
The birch-leaves of his hills love-pages are.
In ink of liquid metals letters strange
We see make crimson signs; they lie in wait
Upon the slopes, pages where passion burns,
The flushed epistles of enamoured gods
Where divine Circes pen heart-moving things.
The Apsaras rhyme out their wayward dance,
The smooth gold of their limbs by harder hues
Of minerals stained, attracting seize
The curious fancy in love's straying eyes.
When far down the clouds droop to his girdle waist
Holding the tearful burden of their hearts,
Drifting grey melancholy through the skies,33
There by the low-hung plateaus' wideness lain
The siddhas in soft shade repose, or flee
Soon up chased by wild driving rain for refuge
To summits splendid in the veilless sun.
Earth's mighty animal life has reached his woods.
The lion on Himaloy keeps his lair,
The elephant herds there wander. Oozing trees
Wounded by stormy rubbings of the tuskers' brows
Loose down their odorous tears in creamy drops,
And winds upon the plateau burdened pant
Weaving the air into a scented dream.
The yaks are there; they lift their bushy tails
To lash the breeze and scatter gleamings white:
With candour casting snares for heart and eye
The moonbeams lie upon the sleeping hills.
Like souls divine who in a sweet excess
All-clasping draw their fallen enemies
Into34 the impartial refuge of their love
Out of the ordered cruelties of life,
He takes into his cavern bosom hunted night.
Afraid of heaven's radiant eyes, crouched up,
She cowers in Nature's great subliminal gloom,
A trembling fugitive from the ardent day,
Lest one embrace should change her into light.
Himaloy's peaks outpeer the circling sun.
He with his upstretched brilliant hands awakes
Immortal lilies in the unreached tarns,
Morning has found miraculous blooms unculled
By the seven sages in their starry march.
Such are the grandeurs of Himaloy's soul,
Such are his divine moods; moonlit he bears,
Of godward symbols the exalted source,
The mystic Soma-plant upon his heights.
He by the Father of sacrifice climbs crowned,
Headman and dynast of earth's soaring hills.
These were the scenes in which the Lovers met.
There lonely mused the silent Soul of all,
And to awake him from his boundless trance
Took woman's form the beauty of the world;
Then infinite sweetness bore a living shape;
She made her body perfect for his arms.
With equal rites he to his giant bed
That mind-born child of the world-fathers bore.
Mena, a goddess of devising heart,
Whom for her wisdom brooding seers adored,
The shapers of all living images,
He sought, Mena named. They knew him for the peer
Of Meru, their sublime celestial home,
They gave him one, their thought's sweet-visioned pride,
Whose womb made steadfast like himself his race.
Their joys of love were like themselves immense,
Then in the wide felicitous lapse of time
The happy tumult of her being tossed
In long and puissant ecstasies bore fruit,
Bearing the banner of her unchanged youth
And beauty to charmed motherhood she crossed.
Mainac she bore the guest of the deep seas,
Upon whose peaks the serpent-women play,
Race of a cavernous and monstrous world,
With strange eyes gleaming past the glaucous wave,
And jewelled tresses glittering through the foam.
Not that his natural air who great had grown
Amid the brilliant perils of the sun,
From Indra tearing the great mountains' wings
With which they soared against the threatened sky,
Below the slippery fields the fugitive sank,
His sheltered essence bore no cruel sign,
Nor felt the anguish of the heavenly scars.
They disappointed of that first35 desire
Mixed in a greater36 joy. It took not earth
For narrow base, but forced the heavens down
Into their passion-trance clasped on the couch
Calm and stupendous of the snow-cold heights.
Then to a nobler load her womb gave place.
For Daksha's daughter, Shiva's wife, had left
Her body lifeless in her father's hall
In that proud sacrifice and fatal, she
The undivided mother infinite,
Indignant for his severing thought of God.
Now in a trance profound of joy by her
Conceived she sprang again to a livelier birth
To heal the sorrow and the dumb divorce.
Out of the unseen soul the splendid child
Came like bright lightning from the invisible air,
Welcome as Fortune to an earthly king
When she is born with daring for her sire
And for her mother policy sublime.
Then was their festival holiday in the world,
Then were the regions subtle with delight:
Heaven's shells blew sweetly through the stainless air
And flowery rain came drifting down; Earth thrilled
Back ravished to the rapture of the skies,
And all her moving and unmoving life
Felt happiness because the Bride was born.
So that fair mother by this daughter shone,
So her young beauty radiated its beams
As might a land of lapis lazuli
Torn by the thunder's voice. As from the earth
Tender and green an infant lance of life,
A jewelled sprouting from the mother slab
The divine child lay on her mother's breast.
They called her Parvati, the mountain child,
When love to love cried answer in the house
And to the sound she turned her lovely face.
A riper day the great maternal name
Of Uma brought. Her father banqueted
Upon her as she grew his sateless37 eyes,
Who saw his life like a large lamp by her
Fulfilled in light; like Heaven's silent path
By Ganges voiceful grown his soul rejoiced;
It flowered like a great and shapeless thought
Suddenly immortal in a perfect word.
Wherever her bright laughing body rolled,
Wherever faltered her sweet tumbling steps,
All eyes were drawn to her like winging bees
Which sailing come upon the wanderer wind
Amid the infinite sweets of honeyed spring
To choose the mango-flowers' delicious breast.
Increasing to new curves of loveliness
Fast grew like the moon's arc from day to day
Her childish limbs. Along the wonderful glens
Among her fair companions of delight
Bounding she strayed, or stooped by murmurous waves
To build frail walls on Ganges' heavenly sands,
Or ran to seize the tossing ball, or pleased
With puppet children her maternal mind
And easily out of that earlier time
All sciences and wisdoms crowding came
Into her growing thoughts like swans that haste
In autumn to a sacred river's shores.
They started from her soul as grow at night
Born from some luminous herb its glimmering rays.
Her mind, her limbs betrayed themselves divine.
Thus she prepared her spirit for mighty life,
Wandering at will in freedom like a deer
On Nature's summits, in enchanted glens,
Absorbed in play, the Mother of the world.
Then youth a charm upon her body came
Adorning every limb, a heady wine
Of joy intoxicating to the heart,
Maddened the eyes that gazed, from every limb
Shot the fine arrows of Love's curving bow.
Her forms into a perfect roundness grew
And opened up sweet colour, grace and light.
So might a painting grow beneath the hand
Of some great master, so a lotus opens
Its bosom to the splendour of the sun.
On the enamoured earth at every step her feet
Threw a red rose, like magic flowers they went
Moving from spot to spot their petalled bloom.
Her motion from the queenly swans had learned
Its wanton swayings; musically it timed
The sweet-voiced anklets' murmuring refrain.
And38 rising to that amorous support
From moulded knee to ankle the supreme
Divinely lessening curve so lovely was
It looked as if on this alone were spent
All her Creator's cunning. Well the rest
Might tax his labour to build half such grace!
Yet was that miracle accomplished. Soft
In roundedness, warm in their smooth sweep, her thighs
Were without parallel in Nature's work.
The greatness of her hips on which life's girdle
Had found its ample rest, deserved already
The lap of divine love where she alone
Might hope one day embosomed by God to lie.
Deep was her hollowed navel where wound in
Above her raiment's knot the tender line
Of down slighter than that dark beam cast forth
From the blue jewel central in her zone.
Her waist was like an altar's middle and there
A triple stair of love was softly built.
Her twin large breasts were pale with darkened paps
They would not let the slender lotus thread
Find passage, on their either side there waited
Tenderer than delicatest flowers the arms
Which Love must turn,39 victorious in defeat,
His chains to bind down the Eternal's neck.
Her throat adorning all the pearls it wore,
With sweep and undulation to the breast
Outmatched the gleaming roundness of its gems.
Crowning all this a marvellous face appeared
In which the lotus found its human bloom
In the soft lustres of the moon. Her smile
Parted the rosy sweetness of her lips
Like candid pearls severing soft coral lines
Or a white flower across a ruddy leaf.
Her speech dropped nectar from a liquid voice
To which the coil's call seemed rude and harsh
And sob of smitten lyres a tuneless sound.
The startled glance of her long lovely eyes
Stolen from her by the swift woodland deer
Fluttered like a blue lotus in the wind,
And the rich pencilled arching of her brows
Made vain the beauty of Love's bow. Her hair's
Dense masses put voluptuously to shame
The mane of lions and the drift of clouds.
He who created all this wondrous world
Weary of scattering perfection40 wide;
To see all beauty in a little space
Had fashioned only her. Called to her limbs
All possibilities of loveliness
Had hastened to their fair attractive seats,
And now the artist eyes that scan all things
Saw every symbol and sweet parallel
Of beauty only realised in her.
Then was he satisfied and loved his work.
The41 sages ranging at their will the stars
Saw her and knew that this indeed was she
Who must become by love the beautiful half
Of the Almighty's body and be all
His heart. This from earth's seers of future things
Himaloy heard and his proud hopes contemned
All other than the greatest for her spouse.
Yet dared he not provoke that dangerous boon
Anticipating its unwakened hour,
But seated in the grandeur of his hills
Like a great soul curbing its giant hopes,
A silent sentinel of destiny,
He watched in mighty calm the wheeling years
She like an offering waited for the fire,
Prepared by Time for her approaching lord.
But the great Spirit of the world forsaken
By that first body of the Mother of all,
Not to her second birth yet come, abode
In crowded worlds ascetic, stern,
And passionless and unespoused,
The Master of the animal life absorbed
In dreamings, wandering with his demon hordes,
Desireless in the blind desire of things.
At length like sculptured marble still he paused,
To meditation yoked. With ashes smeared
Clothed in the skin of beasts
He sat a silent shape upon the hills.
Below him curved Himadri's slope; a soil
With fragrance of the musk-deer odorous
Was round, and there the awful Splendour mused.
Mid cedars sprinkled with the sacred dew
Of Ganges, softly murmuring their chants
In streams subdued the Kinnar minstrels sang.
Where oil-filled slabs were clothed in resinous herbs,
His grisly hosts sat down, their bodies stained
With mineral unguents; bark their ill-shaped limbs
Clad....42 and their tremendous hands
Around their ears had wreathed the hillside's flowers.
On the white rocks compact of frozen snow
His great bull voicing loud immortal pride
Pawed with his hoof the argent soil to dust.
Alarmed the bisons fled his gaze; he bellowed
Impatient of the mountain lion's roar.
Concentrating his world-vast energies,
He who gives all austerities their fruits
Built daily his eternal shape of flame,
In what impenetrable and deep desire?
The worship even of gods he reckons not
Who on no creature leans; yet worship still
To satisfy his awe the mountain paused
And gave his daughter the great Soul to serve.
She brought him daily offerings of flowers
And holy water morn and noon and eve
And swept the altar of the divine fire
And plucking heaped the outspread sacred grass,
Then showering43 over his feet her falling locks
Drowned all her soft fatigue of gentle toils
In the cool moonbeams from the Eternal's head.
Though to austerity of trance a peril
The touch of beauty, he repelled her not
Surrounded by all sweetness in the world
He can be passionless in his large mind,
Austere, unmoved, creation's silent king.
So had they met on the summits of the world.
Like the still spirit and its unawakened force
Near were they now, yet to each other unknown,
He meditating, she in service bowed.
Closing awhile her vast and shadowy wings
Fate over them paused suspended on the hills.
But now in spheres above whose motions fixed
Confirm our cyclic steps, a cry arose
Anarchic. Strange disorders threatened Space.
There was a tumult in the calm abodes,
A clash of arms, a thunder of defeat.
Hearing that sound our smaller physical home
Trembled in its pale circuits, fearing soon
The ethereal revolt might touch its stars.
Then were these knots of our toy orbits torn
And like a falling leaf this world might sink
From the high tree mysterious where it hangs
Between that voiceful and this silent flood.
For long a mute indifference had seized
The Lord of all; no more the Mother of forms
By the persuasion of her clinging arms
Bound him to bear the burden of her works.
Therefore with a slow dreadful confidence
Chaos had lifted his gigantic head.
His movement stole, a shadow on the skies,
Out of the dark inconscience where he hides.
Breaking the tread of the eternal dance
Voices were heard life's music shudders at,
Thoughts were abroad no living mind can bear,
Enormous rhythms had disturbed the gods
Of which they knew not the stupendous law,
And taking new amorphous giant shapes
Desires the primal harmonies repel
Fixed dreadful eyes upon their coveted heavens.
Awhile they found no form could clothe their strength,
No spirit who could brook their feet of fire
Gave them his aspirations for their home.
Only in the invisible heart of things
A dread unease and expectation lived,
Which felt immeasurable energies
In huge revolt against the established world.
But now awake to the fierce nether gods
Tarak the Titan rose; and the gods fled
Before him driven in a luminous rout.
Rumours of an unalterable defeat
Astonished heaven. Like a throng of stars
Drifting through night before the clouds of doom,
Like golden leaves hunted by dark-winged winds
They fled back to their old delightful seats,
Nor there found refuge. Bent to a Titan yoke
They suffered, till their scourged defeated thoughts
Turned suppliants to a greater seat above.
There the Self-born who weaves from his deep heart
Harmonious spaces, sits concealed and watches
The inviolable cycles of his soul.
Thither ascending difficult roads of sleep
Those colonists of heaven, the violent strength
Of thunderous Indra flashing in their front,
Climbed up with labour to their mighty Source.
But as they neared, but as their yearning reached,
Before them from the eternal secrecy
A Form grew manifest from all their forms.
A great brow seemed to face them everywhere,
Eyes which survey the threads of Space looked forth,
The lips whose words are Nature's ordinances
Were visible. Then as at dawn the sun
Smiles upon listless pools and at each smile
A sleeping lotus wakes, so on them shone
That glory and awoke to bloom and life
The drooping beauty of those tarnished gods.
Thus with high voices echoing his word
They hymned their great Creator where he sits
In the mystic lotus musing out his worlds:
“Pure Spirit who wast before creation woke,
Calm violence, destroyer, gulf of Soul,
One, though divided in thy own conceit,
Brahma we see thee here, who from thy deeps
Of memory rescuest forgotten Time,
We see thee, Yogin, on the solemn snows,
Shiva, withdrawing into thy hush the Word
Which sang the fiat of the speeding stars,
They pass like moths into thy flaming gaze.
We adore thee, Vishnu, whose eternal steps
To thee are casual footprints yet thy small base
For luminous systems measureless to our mind,
Whose difficult touch44 thy light and happy smile
Sustains, O wide discoverer of Space!
To thee our adoration, triune Form!
Imagining her triple mood thou gavest
To thy illimitable Nature play.
When nothing was except thy lonely soul
In the ocean of thy being, then thou sowedst
Thy seed infallible, O Spirit unborn,
And from that seed a million unlike forms
Thou variously hast made. Thy world that moves
And breathes, thy world inconscient and inert,
What are they but a corner of thy life?
Thou hast made them and preservest; if thou slayst
It is thy greatness, Lord. Mysterious source
Of all, from thee we draw this light of mind,
This mighty stirring and these failings dark.
In thee we live, by thee act thy thoughts,
Thou grewest thyself a Woman and divine.
Thou grewest twain who wert the formless One,
In one sole body thou wert Lord and Spouse
To found the bliss which by division joins,
Then borest thy being, a spirit who is Man.
All are thy creatures: in the meeting vast
Of thy swift Nature with thy brilliant Mind,
Thou madest thy children, man and beast and god.
Thy days and nights are numberless aeons; when
Thou sleepest, all things sleep, O conscient God;
Thy waking is a birth of countless souls.
Thou art the womb from which all life arose.
But who begot thee? thou the ender of things,
But who has known thy end?
Beginningless,
All our beginnings are thy infant powers,
Thou governest their middle and their close,
But over thee where is thy ruler, Lord?
None knoweth this; alone thou knowest thyself.
Knowledge approaches the unknown. We seek
Discoveries of ourselves in distant things
When first desire stirred, the seed of mind,
And to existence from the plenary void
Thy seers built the golden bridge of thought,
Out of thy uncreated Ocean's rest
By thy own energy thou sprangest forth,
Thou art thy action's path and thou its law,
Thou art thy own vast ending and its sleep,
The subtle and the dense, the flowing and firm,
The hammered close consistency of things,
The clingings of the atoms, lightness, load,
What are all these things but thy shapes? Things seen
And sensible and things no thought has scanned,
Thou grewest, and all such pole and contrary
Art equally, O self-created God.
Thou hast become all this at thy desire;
And nothing is impossible in thee;
Creation is the grandeur of thy soul.
The chanting Veda and the threefold voice,
The sacrifice of works, the heavenly fruit,
The all-initiating OM, from thee,
From thee they sprang; out of thy ocean-heart
The rhythms of our fathomless Words were born,
They name thee Nature, she the mystic law
Of all things done and seen who drives us, mother
And giver of our spirit's seeking, won
In her enormous strength though won from her.
They know thee for Spirit, far above thou dwellest,
Pure of achievement, empty of her noise,
Silent spectator of thy infinite stage,
Unmoved in a serene tremendous calm
Thou viewest indifferently the grandiose scene,
O Deity from whom all deities are,
O Father of the sowers of the world,
O Master of the godheads of the law,
Who so supreme but shall find thee above?
Thou art the enjoyer and the sweet enjoyed,
The hunter and the hunted in the worlds,
The food, the eater, O sole Knower, sole Known!
Sole Dreamer, this bright-imaged dream is thou
Which we pursue in our miraculous minds;
No other thinker is or other thought.
O Lord, when we bow, who from thy being came,
To thee in prayer, is it not thou who prayst,
Spirit transcendent and eternal All?”
Shedding a smile in whose benignancy
Some sweet return like pleasant sunlight glowed,
Then to the wise in heaven the original Seer,
Maker and poet of the magic spheres,
Sent chanting from his fourfold mouth a voice
In which were justified the powers of sound,
“Welcome, you excellent mightinesses of heaven,
Who hold your right by self-supported strengths,
The centuries for your arms. How have you risen
Together in one movement of great Time!
Wherefore bring you now your divine faces, robbed
Of their old inborn light and beauty, pale
As stars in winter mists dim-rayed and cold
Swimming through the dumb melancholy of heaven?
Why do I see your power dejected, frail
Which bounded free and lionlike through heaven?
The thunder in the Python-slayer's hand
Flames not exultant, wan its darings droop,
Quelled is the iridescence of its dance,
Its dreadful beauty like a goddess shamed,
Shrinks back into its violated powers.45
Varuna's unescaped and awful noose
Hangs slack, impuissant and its ruthless coils
Are a charmed serpent's folds, a child can smite
The whirling lasso snare for Titan strengths.
In Kuver's face there is defeat and pain.
Low as an opulent tree its broken branch
In an insulted sullen majesty
His golden arm hangs down the knotted mace.
Death's lord is wan and his tremendous staff
Writes idly on the soil, the infallible stroke
Is an extinguished terror, a charred line
The awful script no tears could ever erase.
O you pale sungods chill and shorn of fire,
How like the vanity of painted suns
You glow, where eyes can set their mortal ray
Daring eternal splendours with their sight.
O fallen rapidities, you lords of speed,
With the resisted torrents' baffled roar
Back on themselves recoil your stormy strengths,
Why come you now like sad and stumbling souls,
Who bounded free and lionlike through heaven?
And you, O Rudras, how the matted towers
Upon your heads sink their dishevelled pride!
Dim hang your moons along the raking twines,
No longer from your puissant throats your voice
Challenges leonine the peaks of Night.
Who has put down the immortal gods? What foe
Stronger than strength could make eternal puissance vain,
As if beyond imagination amidst
The august immutability of law
Some insolent exception unforeseen
Had set in doubt the order of the stars?
Speak, children, wherefore have you come to me?
What prayer is silent on your lips? Did I
Not make the circling suns and give to you
The grandiose thoughts to keep. Guardians of life,
Keepers of the inviolable round,
Why come you to me with defeated eyes?
Helpers, stand you in need of help?” He ceased,
And like a rippling lotus lake whose flowers
Stirred to a gentle wind, the Thunderer turned
Upon the Seer his thousand eyes of thought,
The Seer who is His greater eye than these,
He is the teacher of the sons of light,
His speech inspired outleaps the labouring mind
And opens truth's mysterious doors to gods.
“Veiling by question thy all-knowing sense,
Lord, thou hast spoken,” Brihaspati began,
“The symbol of our sad defeat and fall.
What soul can hide himself from his own source?
Thy vision looks through every eye and sees
Beyond our seeings, thinks in every mind,
Passing our pale peripheries of light.
Tarak the Titan growing in thy smile
As Ocean swells beneath the silent moon...
Discouraged from the godhead of his rays
In Tarak's town the Sun dares not to burn
More than can serve to unseal the lotus' eyes
In rippling waters of his garden pools.
The mystic moon yields him its nectarous heart;
Only the crescent upon Shiva's head
Is safe from the desire of his soul.
The violent winds forget their mightier song,
Their breezes through his gardens dare not rush,
Afraid to steal the flowers upon its boughs,
And only near him sobbingly can pant
A flattering coolness, dreadful brows to fan.
The seasons are forbidden their cycling round.
They are his garden-keepers and must fill
The branches with chaotic wealth of flowers.
Autumn and Spring and Summer joining hands
...46 him with their multitudinous sweets,
Their married fragrances surprise the air.
Ocean his careful servant brings to light
The reposing jewels for his toys, his mine
Of joy is the inexorable abyss.
The serpent gods with blazing gems at night
Hold up their hoods to be his living lamps,
And even great Indra sends his messengers;
Flowers from the tree of bounty and of bliss
They bear to the one fierce and sovereign mind:
All his desires the boughs of heaven must give.
But how can kindness win that violent heart?
Only by chastisement it is appeased.
A tyrant grandeur is the Titan soul...
(Incomplete)
1 Flutes
2 Like
3 shield her unveiled
4 mass
5 large
6 lives
7 for
8 faint
9 flutes
10 pipe
11 mark,
12 lightning's bite.
13 soulless
14 great
15 Or
16 Her feet limned a red rose at every step
On the enamoured earth; like magic flowers
17 They moved
18 With
19 Passing the
20 clasp
21 come,
22 abode
23 Unwed, ascetic, stern, mid crowded worlds,
24 Built daily his eternal shape of flame,
25 Yet though to remote trance near beauty brings
The danger of beauty, he refused her not,
Surrounded by all sweetness in the world
He can be passionless in his still mind
Austere, unmoved, creation's silent king.
26 Of such a strength
27 The glamoured splendour of his mineral rocks
Reflecting all its brilliant colourings
Upon the hangings of the cloudy heavens
Like an untimely sunset's glories sleeps.
28 stain
29 recall
30 They drive
31 Then stirred to keep some sweetness of their voice,
32 dumb
33 air,
34 To
35 former
36 larger
37 unsated
38 Soft
39 would make,
40 his marvels
41 His
42 Blank in MS.
43 She raining
44 Doubtful reading.
45 pride.
46 Blank in MS.
{DocumentDescription}
{StartingDate}
{Year}
1916
{/Year}
{Exactness}
Circa
{/Exactness}
{/StartingDate}
{EndingDate}
{Year}
1918
{/Year}
{Exactness}
Circa
{/Exactness}
{/EndingDate}
{DateType}
Writting
{/DateType}
{WorkKind}
Poetry
{/WorkKind}
{Translation}
From Sanskrit
{/DocumentDescription}