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The Birth of the War-God BLANK VERSE RENDERING OF CANTO I
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 dwells 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 mid all his crowding gifts, As faints in luminous floods the gloomy mark On the moon’s argent disk; 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 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,
Page – 263 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, 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, Faint oilless lamps, give light to see her 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 flutes 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 pipe, tune-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 their 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
Page – 264 Of the Kinnar’s shamefast love, then hanging come The convex 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, Page – 265 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, Nor felt the anguish of the lightning’s bite. 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 soulless 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 great 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 this 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 after-days 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, Heaven’s silent path by Ganges voiceful made, Or thought made glorious by a perfect word. Like bees that winging come upon the wind
Page – 266 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 limned a red rose at every step On the enamoured earth; like magic flowers They moved from spot to spot their petalled bloom; Her motion studied from the queenly swans With 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. Well the rest Might tax his labour to build half such grace, Yet was that miracle accomplished. Soft
Page – 267 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 her 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 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 bow 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 lustres of the moon. Her smile Parted 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
Page – 268 The mane of lions and the drift of clouds. To clasp 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 Here 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. She waited like an offering for the fire. For to compel himself the divine mind He dared not, but remained like a great soul Which watches for the destined hour’s approach Curbing the impatience of its godlike hopes. But he the spirit of the world, forsaken By that first body of the mother of all Nor to her second birth yet come, abode Unwed, ascetic, stern, mid crowded worlds Alone 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 he ceased; like sculptured marble still To meditation turned he yoked his spirit; 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
Page – 269 Mid cedars sprinkled with the sacred dew Of Ganges. Softly murmuring their chants In strains subdued the Kinnar minstrels sang, On 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 hillside’s flowers. On the white rocks compact of frozen snow, His great bull voicing low 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 Built daily his eternal shape of flame 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. Nor though to remote trance near beauty brings Its lovely danger, was that gift refused. Surrounded by all sweetness in the world He can be passionless who is creation’s king. 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 toil In the cool moonbeams from the Eternal’s head. So had they met on summits of the world Like the still 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. Page – 270 |
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