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The Birth of the War-God
EXPANDED VERSION OF CANTO I AND PART OF CANTO II
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. Of such a strength High-piled, so 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
Page – 271 He listens to her chant. The distant hills Imagined him the calf to which she lows When the wideness milks her udders. Meru is near, The heavenly unseen height; like visible hints Of his great subtle growths of peace and joy Her musing woods arise; gems brilliant-rayed She bears and herbs on every mountain marge, Gifts of the mother to her mighty child. In such warm infinite riches has she 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 stain on the moon’s argent disk, They have forgot his chill severity In sweetness which escapes from him on 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 a smile of God, White grandeurs overlook wild green romance. He keeps his summits for immortal steps. The life of man upon his happier slopes Roams wild and bare and free; the life of gods Pronely from the unattainable summits climbs Down the rude greatness of his huge rock-park. As if rejecting glory of its veils It leaps 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 dim 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
Page – 272 The path his prey the mighty lions go. For glittering pearls from the felled elephants Lain clotted, dropping from the hollow claws Betray 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, They have kissed 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 When the strong forest-wanderer is lain Twined with his love, marrying with hers his sighs, Give light to see her joy those thrilled rocks keep 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 by and leave our hearts Startled with hintings of a greater life. The Kinnar passes singing in his glades. Then stirred to keep some sweetness of their voice, 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
Page – 73 Are with his frosted slabs of snow distressed. But by 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 slow motion’s tardy rich appeal. She too in grottoed caverns lies embraced. Forced from the shamefast sweetness of her limbs The subtle raiment leaves her fainting hands To give her striving 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 In glen and valley; or upon brown banks They lie close-bosomed of colour amorous. The smooth gold of their limbs by harder hues Stained curiously makes contrasts bright, to seize The straying look of some world-lover’s eyes, As when Himaloy’s metals flinging back Upon the hangings of the tawny heavens From glistened rocks their brilliant colourings Like an untimely sunset’s glories sleep. Far down the clouds droop to his girdle-waist Holding the tearful burden of their hearts, Drifting grey melancholy through the air; There on the low-hung plateaus’ wideness lain The Siddhas in soft shade repose, or up Chased by wild driving rain for refuge flee To summits splendid in the veilless sun. Earth’s mighty animal life has reached his woods.
Page – 274 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 breezes and white gleamings leap: Such candours 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 To the impartial refuge of their love Out of the ordered cruelties of life, He takes to 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.
Page – 275 With equal rites he to his giant bed The 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 won to shape in her his stable 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 proud desire Mixed in a larger 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 halls 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 livelier birth
Page – 276 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 she came as Fortune to a 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 unsated eyes And 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-flower’s delicious breast.
Page – 277 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. At every step on the enamoured earth Her feet threw a red rose, like magic flowers 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. And falling to that amorous support
Page – 278 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 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 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 would make, victorious in defeat, His chains to bow 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 coïl’s call seemed rude and harsh And sob of smitten lyres a tuneless sound. The startled glance of her long lovely eyes
Page – 279 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 his marvels 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. His 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 unwed, ascetic, stern, Alone and passionless and unespoused,
Page – 280 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 strains 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 [ ] 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, 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 showering over his feet her falling locks Drowned all her soft fatigue of gentle toils
Page – 281 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 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 shadowy wings Fate over them paused suspended on the hills. Page – 282 CANTO II
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 Soul 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.
Page – 283 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.
Page – 284 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 extended steps To thee are casual footprints, thy small base For luminous systems measureless to our mind, Whose difficult toil thy light and happy smile Sustains, O wide discoverer of Space. To thee our adoration, triune Form! Imagining her triple mood thou gav’st 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 drew this light of mind, This mighty stirring and these failings dark. In thee we live, by thee we act thy thoughts. Thou gav’st 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, Thou bor’st thy being, a Spirit who is Man. All are thy creatures: in the meeting vast Of thy swift Nature with thy brilliant Mind, Thou mad’st 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,
Page – 85 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. By thy ineffable identity 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 each 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 are born. They name thee Nature, she the mystic law Of all things done and seen who drives us, mother And giver of our spirits’ seekings, won In her enormous strength, though won from her. They know thee Spirit, far above thou dwellest Pure of achievement, empty of her noise. Silent spectator of thy infinite stage,
Page – 286 Unmoved in a serene tremendous calm Thou viewst 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, we bow, who from thy being came, To thee in prayer. Is it not thou who prayst, Spirit transcendent and eternal All?” Then to the wise in heaven the original Seer, Maker and poet of the magic spheres, Shedding a smile in whose benignancy Some sweet return like pleasant sunlight glowed, 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 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 powers dejected, frail? 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 pride. Varoona’s unescaped and awful noose Hangs slack, impuissant, and its ruthless coils
Page – 287 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 sun-gods 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 snaky 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 ye come to me? What prayer is silent on your lips? Did I Not make the circling suns and give to you My 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,
Page – 288 And like a rippling lotus lake whose flowers Stir 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 walk his garden-keepers and must fill The branches with chaotic wealth of flowers. Autumn and spring and summer joining hands [ ] him with their multitudinous sweets, Their married fragrances surprise the air. Ocean his careful servant brings to birth The ripening jewels for his toys; his mine
Page – 289 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 him 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 And only by destruction and by pain Feels in the sobs and tears of suffering things A crude reality of [ ] force.
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