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

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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,

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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

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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,

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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,

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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

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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,

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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,

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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

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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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