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Title: Sandhya

Songs of twilight

Author: Dhan Gopal Mukerji

Release date: October 2, 2007 [eBook #22848]

Language: English

Credits: E-text prepared by Chris Curnow, Joseph Cooper, Sankar Viswanathan, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SANDHYA ***

 

E-text prepared by Chris Curnow, Joseph Cooper, Sankar Viswanathan,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net)

 

 

 

SANDHYA

SONGS OF TWILIGHT

 

 

BY

DHAN GOPAL MUKERJI

AUTHOR OF "LAYLA-MAJNU"
AND "RAJANI"

 

Seal

 

 

NINETEEN SEVENTEEN

PAUL ELDER AND COMPANY

SAN FRANCISCO

 

 

Copyright, 1917

By PAUL ELDER AND COMPANY

SAN FRANCISCO

TO

MRS. HANCOCK BANNING

MRS. WILLIAM CLARK, JR.

FOREWORD

Like "Rajani" [perhaps more than], "Sandhya" is a slender rill that has drawn its music from my Bengali which has told upon its English structure. This and many other faults of these poems are due to their unyielding adherence to spontaneity.

"Sandhya" came then, as "Rajani" in its own way through the bed of my Bengali reflecting its sound and sense, and trying to echo back its music that descends on all with the fading twilight.

Dhan Gopal Mukerji.

N. B.—Since some of these poems were born without, and defy titles, I have refrained from forcing any on them.

CONTENTS

POEMPAGE
Symbolism 13
Source of Singing 24
"With purple shadows the mist measures the infinite sea" 35
"O, Old! O, New!" 46
"The far away called her" 58
Lassitude 610
"Ah! pale, cool lips that burn" 711
Forlorn 812
After a Bengali Song 913
Moonrise 1014
At Ventura, California 1115
"The same air that you breathe" 1216
"Why this return?" 1317
"By the verge of the woodland" 1418
The Dream of His Soul 1519
The Eurasian 1620
"In the perfumed shrine of love" 1721
The Infirm Beggar Sings 1822
"Kiss, my love, kiss" 1923
Color-Harmonies 2024
Sanatan (The Absolute) 2125
Coming of the Fog 2226
"In love's afterglow, full of stars" 2327
The End 2428
The Confluence 2530
"In the deeps of Dream" 2631
To Leo B. Mihan 2732
Chopin's Funeral March 2833
"In the golden afterglow you lay" 2934
Henrik Ibsen 3036
After Hearing "My Old Kentucky Home" 3137
The Coming of the Tide of Night 3238
Dead Love 3339
"It is the same twilight, dear" 3440
Weariness 3542
"A call, not a song" 3643
Remorse 3744
Poet 3845
Wanderer 3946
At Dawn 4047
"From her many-colored bow, Nature" 4148
"If words fail, song will come" 4249
Rainy Night 4350
Ghosts 4451
Rain 4552
Evening Worship 4654
"The rosy mist stilly polishes the round mirror" 4755
"The sun's golden spear" 4856
Truce 4957
A Parallel 5058
"'Nothing endures,' you said" 5159
Disappointment 5260
Buddha 5361
"Ask me not to stand at thy friendship's gate" 5462
"Golden vines they" 5563
At Sundown 5664
"Tears well out from my heart" 5765
"At last thou comest" 5866
"The lingering light of the sun" 5967
"I have drunk your tears with insatiate lips" 6068
Sound Butterflies (In a Fountain) 6169
"Even in sadness thou art beside me" 6270
"By the sea of sleep walks white-robed Night" 6371
Farewell (After a Hindustani Song) 6472
Satiety 6574
"Drowsy the noonday air" 6675
Chatterton 6776
"A summer song it was" 6877
"Who Knows" 6978
The First Vision 7080
Shanti 7182

SANDHYA, SONGS OF TWILIGHT

I

SYMBOLISM

Tongueless the bell!
 Lute without a song!
 It is not night
 It is God's dawn,
 Silence its unending song.
Over heart's valley,
 In the soul's night,
 Through pain's window
 Behold! His light!
 On Life's Height.
No prayer, now,
 Though death-waves roll,
 Faith's candle lit,
 Beside it sits the soul
 Reading Eternity's scroll.

2

SOURCE OF SINGING

A bruised heart,
 A wounded soul,
A broken lute,
 That is all!
A sad evening,
 And a lone star,
Then song reddens—
 Sets life's forest afire!

3

With purple shadows the mist measures the infinite sea
 That spreads her wave-raiment in lavender, violet, gray, and green;
 While with thin silver rays a lone star seeks to sound the deeps.
The breeze-wings tire of flight;
 The mist-threads weave a rose-fringed dusky drapery
 To cover the bare breasts of the dunes from the moon's langour-heavy eyes.
The shadows die in purple silence;
 Fades the one star from the sky,
 As the dark mist puts out the rose-red moon from its deep.
Pale gleams the lighthouse light;
 No warring waves break the peace of sleep tonight
 Nor a hungry wind shrieks in pain from the lea.
Under her heavy veil of black
 A languid sea sluggishly flows
 To some far land of forsaken dreams.

4

"O, OLD! O, NEW!"[1]

Who are you?
 Why make me wait
 From the hour of dew
 Till another sunset?
 Why do I look
 For your coming?
 Listen to the weeping brook
 That might bring
 To my lonely shore
 A word from you.
 Ah, nothing! not a leaf's tremor!
 O, old! O, longed for new!
 Who are you? I ask;
 Know not why I seek
 From day to dusk
 Without waking or sleep,—
 No sleep! no waking!
 A dreaming, a longing;
 Not knowing, yet seeking,
 For your coming waiting—
 O, spring-born!
 O, autumn-clad!
 O, soul's new morn!
 O, old! O, glad!
 So glad, so young!
 O, unseen, unknown,
 O, fugitive vision!
 O, eternal moan
 In my heart—
O, tearful Soul of laughter,
 Untouched, unhurt,
 O, sweet! O, bitter!
 My born yet unborn,
 Shadow not fallen
 O, undawning morn—
 O, message unbroken.
 Why, how, when?
 I wait, wait for you,
 O embrace of earth and heaven;
 O, Old! O, New!

[1] "O, Old! O, New!" is the cry of a "Poáti," e. g., a mother's cry to her unborn child. "Poáti" has no precise English synonym.

5

The far away called her—
 A pilgrim on the hope-lit bark of youth,
 A woman, a child, a soul
 On an argosy for the lands of south.
It called her in her dreams;
 Her waking into a deeper dream grew;
 The flute of the distant
 Played ceaselessly the music of the new.
With words of fire it called her,
 Beyond the bourne of her days
 To a silent sea of joy
 Washed by unending twilight-rays.
It called her at dawn
 When night shed the star-jewels from her hair;
 It called her at sunset
 When the moon mutely ascended the heaven's stair.
It called her without ceasing—
 Hour after hour but a calling,
 Till "Come, come, come!"
 At her soul's door kept repeating:
Come, come, come!—in
 Her word, her music, her song;
 Far away, near, far again
 Heedless of nightfall and dawn.
It called, it cried, it prayed,
 Till She, the deity, made answer
 Through youth, through age, through death
 To her own far away's receding star.

6

LASSITUDE

Ah! to be able to sing,
 To sorrow in melody;
 To string with silver
 Sorrow's dark harp!
Or, mount every thorn
 Crowning life's brow
 With lustrous stars—
 Those tears of the sky.
Rolling down its face
 When night's hand puts
 Darkness's crown on its head
 As twilight dies.
None of these, for my soul;
 Only to weep is given to me,
 To nourish my heart's crop
 For the scythe of barrenness to reap.

7

Ah! pale cool lips that burn,
 Body that yields, though unyielding,
 Oh, moon with the heat of the sun!
 Flashing out a million lights
 To cleave into nothing the endless firmament of my being.
 Take all; my soul's mistress! heart's queen,
 The flaming fancies of my dream-tortured night
 The intoxicating fruits of my day dream,
 The fiery lotus of my senses' delight
 That rises from the abyss of my life.
 The abysmal heaven of love and living
 Now bruised, burnt, torn and thrown
 To the winds of thy ravishing rejoicing
 Whose inarticulate words of delight and moan
 Make the ever-yielding music of my soul.

8

FORLORN

In the star-blurred hours of the night
 When the cloud-dams stay the flow of winds,
 Not even the shadow of a meteor moves,
 As in the watch-tower of love I sit;
 Through the casement of hope look for thy coming
 Along the moss-grown path of stones—
 Those agonies that time has built on my soul—
 By the unfathomable lake of my tears
 Shed when even prayers had failed
 To bring thy returning.
 Come, destroyer of my peace and sleep,
 Plunderer of lights of my days!
 Enigma on the scroll of my fate
 Before the lightnings fired my tower
 And thunders crashed in my life's sky.
 Only send the echo of thy footfalls—
 The ring of thy song,
 And a star—reflection of thy smile—
 Those million suns in the firmament of my dawn.

9

AFTER A BENGALI SONG

In the forest of my being the voice of your lute;
 In the depth of my heart the pearl of your tear;
 In the temple of my soul chimes the bell of your love.
The fire of dawn, shadow of eve,
 Life's sorrow, and death's mute-enchanting peace
 Steal away silently, fearfully, at thy flute's music.
O, frail, faint call which I seek to echo!
 O, breath of love laden with the aroma of my soul!
 Why seek I ever without, O guest at my door?

10

MOONRISE

A soft light mantle of rose wear the brown hills
 As they look down on the valley where the rills
 Spin their long silver embroideries
 For the fringe of spring's greenéd draperies.
The cloud-banks recede with the fading breeze,
 The warblers fall into silence in the trees
 To listen to many-colored dream-melodies
 That the mute stars make on sleep's endless seas.
The last light flickers out of the sky,
 Shadows with golden feet o'er the green valley hie;
 The silver rills trill like warblers from earth's deeps
 As the moon, the sun of another dawn, heavenward leaps.

11

AT VENTURA, CALIFORNIA

The moon rises and washes the brine with silver;
 The dunes like white elephants restfully asleep after the chase;
 And the fog comes to bring the moon its veil of shades.
 The waves stretch their phosphorescent arms
 To embrace the night,
 The wind like a wounded gull beats its wings
 Over the land, over the sea, into the fog-vested intangibility.
Like a thousand trumpets the breakers
 Proclaim the empiry of night,
 The rocky caverns send back echoes
 Like homage from vassals near and far;
 A faint cry seemeth to flash like lightning;
 Through the clouds of the roar of waves:
 It is not from the rocks, nor from the sea;
 Ah! it is the prayer of a mightier ocean—Humanity!

12

The same air that you breathe
 Is the air that caresses my sky;
 The sunlight that lingers on your hair and lips
 Sets fire to the pathway of my life;
 And the call of nature's numberless birds
 But reflects in world's mirror the music of our heart's singing—
 Melody made of sweet agonies,
 Exquisite joys poured from pitchers of pain,
 As this summer's heat
 From the ever-burning heart of heaven.
 Not heaven alone;
 The earth, the air, flowers, and leaves
 Filled with passion that knows no slaking,
 Yet tranquil like sleep's dream-billowed sea.
 More than dream-billowed sea this love that I bring,
 Its boistrous waves seek the firmament of your yielding;
 While your heart-beats' arrows seek to slay my heart a'beating,
 As I inhale the fragrance of your breath and hair;
 And pour the perfume of my soul
 On your sun-bathed feet.

13

Why this return?
 Why this sunlight
 When all seemed without sun?
Whence this call?
 I cannot tell,
 Yet its mighty thralls.
Hold me, haunt me
 Hour after hour,
 With its name of thee.
All seems ended,
 The last light lost
 In the house of the dead.
Yet with time's tide
 Rises thy face,
 My heart, my soul, my bride.
Though poureth the rain,
 And sorrow clouds my sky,
 Yet not mine the pain.
What I hear
 I can not tell,
 And what I fear,
Will not endure:
 But thou returnest,
 O serene, O silent, O pure!

14

By the verge of the woodland,
 Where purling brooks loosen their brown tresses,
 Where the music of the breeze
 Is played on viols of the vines and trees,
 Thy soft words I hear
 Like songs from enchantment's strings.
 Ah, vanishing moments of ecstacy!
 Far-fleeing only to be nearer to my soul,
 Rest, rest awhile on the hillside of my echoing!
 Pour on it the sweet rain of thy words' melody
 Till they mingle and drown my tears
 Into thy kisses' passion-swept sea.

15

THE DREAM OF HIS SOUL