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,

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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

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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,

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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

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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

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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 

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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

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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.

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