-57_To the Cuckoo.htm

    To the Cuckoo

Sounds of the wakening world, the year’s increase,

Passage of wind and all his dewy powers

With breath and laughter of new-bathed flowers

And that deep light of heaven above the trees

Awake mid leaves that muse in golden peace

Sweet noise of birds, but most in heavenly showers

The cuckoo’s voice pervades the lucid hours,

Is priest and summoner of these melodies.

The spent and weary streams refresh their youth

At that creative rain and barren groves

Regain their face of flowers; in thee the ruth

Of Nature wakening her dead children moves.

But chiefly to renew thou hast the art

Fresh childhood in the obscured human heart.  

   Transiit, non Periit

   (My grandfather, Rajnarayan Bose, died September 1899)

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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    What is this talk

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 world uptorn,

Shaking the hearts of men, and awe-imbued

Silent the audience sits of joy forlorn,

Meanwhile behind the stage the actor sighs

Deep-lunged relief, puts by 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 slayer and slain

Beyond our vision passing live again.  

    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 force a double strength 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 the span

Of life the limit of immortal man.

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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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