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Part Two
Baroda Circa 1898 1902
Complete Narrative Poems
Urvasie
Pururavus from Titan conflict ceased Turned worldwards, through illimitable space Had travelled like a star ‘twixt earth and heaven Slowly and brightly. Late our mortal air He breathed; for downward now the hooves divine Trampling out fire with sound before them went, And the great earth rushed up towards him, green. With the first line of dawn he touched the peaks, Nor paused upon those savage heights, but reached Inferior summits subject to the rain, And rested. Looking northwards thence he saw The giant snows upclimbing to the sky, And felt the mighty silence. In his ear The noise of a retreating battle was, Wide crash of wheels and hard impetuous blare Of trumpets and the sullen march of hosts. Therefore with joy he drank into his soul The virgin silence inaccessible Of mountains and divined his mother’s breasts. But as he listened to the hush, a thought Came to him from the spring and he turned round And gazed into the quiet maiden East, Watching that birth of day, as if a line Of some great poem out of dimness grew, Slowly unfolding into perfect speech. The grey lucidity and pearliness Bloomed more and more, and over earth chaste again The freshness of the primal dawn returned, Life coming with a virginal sharp strength, Renewed as from the streams of Paradise. Nearer it drew now to him and he saw Out of the widening glory move a face Of dawn, a body fresh from mystery, Enveloped with a prophecy of light More rich than perfect splendours. It was she,
Page – 67 The golden virgin, Usha, mother of life, Yet virgin. In a silence sweet she came, Unveiled, soft-smiling, like a bride, rose-cheeked, Her bosom full of flowers, the morning wind Stirring her hair and all about her gold. Nor sole she came. Behind her faces laughed Delicious, girls of heaven whose beauties ease The labour of the battle-weary Gods; They in the golden dawn of things sprang gold, From youth of the immortal Ocean born, They youthful and immortal, and the waves Were in their feet and in their voices fresh As foam, and Ocean in their souls was love. Laughing they ran among the clouds, their hair And raiment all a tempest in the breeze. The sky grew glorious with them and their feet A restless loveliness and glad eyes full Of morning and divine faces bent back For the imperious kisses of the wind. So danced they numberless as dew-drops gleam, Ménaca, Misracayshie, Mullica, Rumbha, Nelabha, Shela, Nolinie, Lolita, Lavonya and Tilôttama, — Many delightful names; among them she. And seeing her Pururavus the king Shuddered as of felicity afraid, And all the wide heart of Pururavus Moved like the sea — when with a coming wind Great Ocean lifts in far expectancy Waiting to feel the shock, so was he moved By expectation of her face. For this Was secret in its own divinity Like a high sun of splendour, or half seen All troubled with her hair. Yet Paradise Breathed from her limbs and tresses wonderful, With odours and with dreams. Then for a space Voiceless the great king stood and, troubled, watched
Page – 68 That lovely advent, laughter and delight Gaining upon the world. At last he sighed And the vague passion broke from him in speech Heard by the solitude. "O thou strong god, Who art thou graspest me with hands of fire, Making my soul all colour? Surely I thought The hills would move and the eternal stars Deviate from their rounds immutable, Never Pururavus; yet lo! I fall. My soul whirls alien and I hear amazed The galloping of uncontrollable steeds. Men said of me: The King Pururavus Grows more than man; he lifts to azure heaven In vast equality his spirit sublime.’ Why sink I now towards attractive earth? And thou, who art thou, mystery! golden wonder! Moving enchantress! Wast thou not a part Of soft auspicious evenings I have loved? Have I not seen thy beauty on the clouds? In moonlight and in starlight and in fire? Some flower whose brightness was a trouble? a face Whose memory like a picture lived with me? A thought I had, but lost? O was thy voice A vernal repetition in some grove, Telling of lilies clustered o’er with bees And quiet waters open to the moon? Surely in some past life I loved thy name, And syllable by syllable now strive Its sweetness to recall. It seems the grace Of visible things, of hushed and lonely snows And burning great inexorable noons, And towns and valleys and the mountain winds. All beauty of earthliness is in thee, all Luxurious experience of the soul. O comest thou because I left thy charm Aiming at purity, O comest thou, Goddess, to avenge thyself with beauty? Come!
Page – 69 Unveil thyself from light! limit thyself, O infinite grace, that I may find, may clasp. For surely in my heart I know thou bearest A name that naturally weds with mine, And I perceive our union magically Inevitable as a perfect verse Of Veda. Set thy feet upon my heart, O Goddess! woman, to my bosom move! I am Pururavus, O Urvasie." As when a man to the grey face of dawn Awaking from an unremembered dream, Repines at life awhile and buffets back The wave of old familiar thoughts, and hating His usual happiness and usual cares Strives to recall a dream’s felicity; — Long strives in vain and rolls his painful thought Through many alien ways, when sudden comes A flash, another, and the vision burns Like lightning in the brain, so leaped that name Into the musing of the troubled king. Joyous he cried aloud and lashed his steeds: They, rearing, leaped from Himalaya high And trampled with their hooves the southern wind.
But now a cry broke from the lovely crowd Of fear and tremulous astonishment; And they huddled together like doves dismayed Who see the inevitable talons near And rush of cruel wings. ‘Twas not from him, For him they saw not yet, but from the north A fear was on them, and Pururavus Heard a low roar as of a distant cloud. He turned half-wrathful. In the far northwest Heaven stood thick, concentrated in gloom, Darkness in darkness hidden; for the cloud Rose firmament on sullen firmament, As if all brightness to entomb. Across
Page – 70 Great thundrous whispers rolled, and lightning quivered From edge to edge, a savage pallor. Down The south wind dropped appalled. Then for a while Stood pregnant with the thunderbolt and wearing Rain like a colour, the monumental cloud Sublime and voiceless. Long the heart was stilled And the ear waited listening. Suddenly From motionless battalions as outride A speed disperse of horsemen, from that mass Of livid menace went a frail light cloud Rushing through heaven, and behind it streamed The downpour all in wet and greenish lines. Swift rushed the splendid anarchy admired, And reached, and broke, and with a roar of rain And tumult on the wings of wind and clasp Of the o’erwhelmed horizons and with bursts Of thunder breaking all the body with sound And lightning ‘twixt the eyes intolerable, Like heaven’s vast eagle all that blackness swept Down over the inferior snowless heights And swallowed up the dawn. Pururavus, Lost in the streaming tumult, stood amazed: But as he watched, he was aware of locks Flying and a wild face and terrible And fierce familiar eyes. Again he looked And knew him in a hundred battles crossed, The giant Cayshie. It seemed but yesterday That over the waves of fight their angry eyes Had met. He in the dim disguise of rain, All swift with storm, came passionate and huge, Filling the regions with himself. Immense He stooped upon the brides of heaven. They Like flowers in a gust scattered and blown Fled every way; but he upon that beauty Magical sprang and seized and lifted up, As the storm lifts a lily, and arrow-like Up towards the snow-bound heights in rising cloud
Page – 71 Rushed with the goddess to the trembling East. But with more formidable speed and fast Storming through heaven King Pururavus Hurled after him. The giant turned and knew The sound of those victorious wheels and light In a man’s face more dangerous to evil Than all the shining Gods. He stood, he raised One dreadful arm that stretched across the heavens, And shook his baffling lance on high. But vast, But magnified by speed came threatening on With echoing hooves and battle in its wheels The chariot of the King Pururavus Bearing a formidable charioteer, Pururavus. The fiend paused, he rolled his eyes Full of defiance, passion and despair Upon the swooning goddess in his arms And that avenger. Violence and fear Poised him a moment on a wave of fate This way to death cadent, that way to shame. Then groaning in his great tumultuous breast He dropped upon the snow heaven’s ravished flower And fled, a blackness in the East. New sky Replenished from the sullen cloud dawned out; The great pure azure rose in sunlight wide. Nor King Pururavus pursued but checked His rushing chariot on the quiet snow And sprang towards her and knelt down and trembled. Perfect she lay amid her tresses wide, Like a mishandled lily luminous, As she had fallen. From the lucid robe One shoulder gleamed and golden breast left bare, Divinely lifting, one gold arm was flung, A warm rich splendour exquisitely outlined Against the dazzling whiteness, and her face Was as a fallen moon among the snows. And King Pururavus, beholding, glowed Through all his limbs and maddened with a love
Page – 72 He feared and cherished. Overawed and hushed, Hardly even breathing, long he knelt, a greatness Made stone with sudden dread and passion. Love With fiery attempt plucked him all down to her, But fear forbade his lips the perfect curls. At length he raised her still unkissed and laid In his bright chariot, next himself ascended And resting on one arm with fearful joy Her drooping head, with the other ruled the car; — With one arm ruled, but his eyes were for her Studying her fallen lids and to heart-beats Guessing the sweetness of the soul concealed. And soon she moved. Those wonderful wide orbs Dawned into his, quietly, as if in muse. A lovely slow surprise crept into them Afterwards; last, something far lovelier, Which was herself, and was delight, and love. As when a child falls asleep unawares At a closed window on a stormy day, Looking into the weary rain, and long Sleeps, and wakes quietly into a life Of ancient moonlight, first the thoughtfulness Of that felicitous world to which the soul Is visitor in sleep, keeps her sublime Discurtained eyes; human dismay comes next, Slowly; last, sudden, they brighten and grow wide With recognition of an altered world, Delighted: so woke Urvasie to love.
But, hardly now that luminous inner dawn Bridged joy between their eyes, laughter broke in And the returning world; for Ménaca, Standing a lily in the snows, laughed back Those irresistible wheels and spoke like song; — She tremulous and glad from bygone fear; But all those flowerlike came, increasing light, Their bosoms quick and panting, bright, like waves
Page – 73 That under sunshine lift remembering storm. And before all Ménaca tremulously Smiling: "Whither, O King Pururavus, Bear’st thou thy victory? Wilt thou set her A golden triumph in thy halls? But she Is other than thy marble caryatids And austere doors, purity colourless. Read not too much thy glory in her eyes. Will not that hueless inner stream yet serve Where thou wast wont to know thy perfect deeds? But give her back, give us our sister back, And in return take all thyself with thee." So with flushed cheeks and smiling Ménaca. And great Pururavus set down the nymph In her bright sister’s arms and stood awhile Stormily calm in vast incertitude, Quivering. Then divine Tilôttama: "O King, O mortal mightier than the Gods! For Gods change not their strength, but are of old And as of old, and man, though less than these, May yet proceed to greater, self-evolved. Man, by experience of passion purged, His myriad faculty perfecting, widens His nature as it rises till it grows With God conterminous. For one who tames His hot tremulousness of soul unblest And feels around him like an atmosphere A quiet perfectness of joy and peace, He, like the sunflower sole of all the year, Images the divine to which he tends: So thou, sole among men. And thou today Hast a high deed perfected, saved from death The great Gods of the solar world the first, And saved with them the stars; but her today Without whom all that world would grow to shade Or grow to fire, but each way cease to live. And thou shalt gather strange rewards, O King,
Page – 74 Hurting thyself with good, and lose thy life To have the life of all the solar world, Draw infinite gain out of more infinite loss, And, for the lowest, endless fame. Today Retire nor pluck the slowly-ripening fates; Since who anticipates the patient Gods, Finds his crown ashes and his empire grief. So choose blind Titans in their violent souls Unseeing, forfeiting the beautiful world For momentary splendours." She was silent, And he replied no word, but gathering His reins swept from the golden group. His car Through those mute Himalayan doors of earth And all that silent life before our life Solitary and great and merciless, Went groaning down the wind. He, the sole living, Over the dead deep-plunging precipices Passed bright and small in a wide dazzling world Illimitable, where eye flags and ear Listening feels inhuman loneliness. He tended towards Gungotri’s solemn peaks And savage glaciers and the caverns pure Whence Ganges leaps, our mother, virgin-cold. But ere he plunged into the human vales And kindlier grandeurs, King Pururavus Looked back upon a gust of his great heart, And saw her. On a separate peak, divine, In blowing raiment and a glory of hair She stood and watched him go with serious eyes And a soft wonder in them and a light. One hand was in her streaming folds, one shaded Her eyes as if the vision that she saw Were brighter even than deathless eyes endure. Over her shoulder pressed a laughing crowd Of luminous faces. And Pururavus Staggered as smitten, and shaking wide his reins Rushed like a star into the infinite air;
Page – 75 So curving downwards on precipitate wheels, His spirit all a storm, came with the wind Far-sounding into Ila’s peaceful town.
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