Dhan Gopal Mukerji

“ Like tears shed over a dream,
Like sighs that stream
In an unseen nameless way
Into the heart of our lay.
It seemed hour on hours,
Years like fading flowers
Scattered their petals and bloom
In a half-lit forest of gloom.
The softness of its sounds,
Like the coursing of a million hounds
Of dream over the glade of sleep
Where tortured silences creep.
Exquisite, pain-laden, peaceful,
This night most beautiful,
What love forsaken by loving
Sets his heart a'singing?
No torment in it, but tenderness;
A liquid star-music of sadness
Pours into my soul half asleep ”

“ It is of thee that I dream,
In the heart of my soul's stream
That flows to thy feet, my darling.
[41]
Dark grows both east and west;
Flower-heads droop into rest,
As I seek to lay my heart and loving
On thy star-white breast, my darling,
And sink into that pool of sleep
That rises from thy singing's deep,
While all are silent, as my desires near thee, my Queen.
What peace thy presence breathes!
What serenity weaves its wreathes! ”

“ It is all dark and dank, a mourning of earth and heaven,
Sorrow-laden, life-weary, long-lost, death-craven,
A day lost to time, a light more baleful than night.
No dead these, but a living death seeking peace
From the furies—their own thoughts—sorrow—surcease,
Kissing the lashing wind thinking it to be the breeze.
Pour, pour, pour, O relentless, exhaustless pain!
To the measure of thine own agony, thy woe's refrain,
These desolate streams of thy music, thy pangs of a million seas. ”

“ The Dream of his Soul, in flesh and blood—
Not to possess, but only to see—
Was given him, for an hour:
Ah, fool, he lingered longer,—
The Dream died like the shadow of a Star!
[20]
16 THE EURASIAN
Indignity your part today,
Suffering the guerdon of the gods;
No country to claim your own,
Nowhere to lay your head.
The ocean of ignorance separates us;
The snow-storm of commerce blinds the eye;
Yet you must stand true,
Bridge of blood and flesh between the West and East.
In ages to come, when
Man will love his brother,
Irrespective of birth and breed ”

“ Sleep children in the cradle of rest.
Dream stars, dream moon;
Dream sea; dream O, sun;
Dream rainbow, dream storm;
Dream rain, O, milk from Heaven's breast.
Rest ye feet, rest ye hands;
Rest bleeding hours of even;
Rest O, heart torn and burnt,
Rest my fancies, day is done.
Sleep night, sleep with star-eyes closed;
Sleep sorrow in death's silent repose;
Sleep O, Soul, be it twilight or morn;
Sleep thou too, O, sleep, heedless of moon and sun.
[5] Shanti is the Sanskrit for "Peace." ”

“ Where no offering that I bring ever be too dear,
Where no soul burnt in the fire of senses can perish;
Where no suffering fails to be mother and daughter of joy.
Take all, great God among these Gods:
The pearl of my woman-soul buried in deeps of passion,
The coral-wreath from the ocean of my bleeding heart ”

“ 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.
[4]
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!
[5]
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 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. ”

“ A dark breeze the forest-heart stirs;
Yet merry the face of the sky—
Twinkling in joy
Its innumerable eyes, the stars.
Hushed the music within;
Pleasure's silver laugh, dead;
Thought lost in reverie—
Reverie receding into nothing.
The taper of dreams flickers
Out, leaving the soul in dusk
By the altar of love,
Flower-laden as the night with stars.
[59]
51
"Nothing endures," you said;
"None can die," quoth love;
"In the firmament of loving
No stars set, no meteors fall." ”

“ Like the sun, our souls seek repose.
The mountains, empurpled priests,
The river, the chant from their lips,
Sunlit the pine-candles' crimson tips.
At this hour of worship
Shadows spread their wings;
Silently the breeze-bell rings.
The stars put a silver riband round night's tresses,
The light fades like a receding song
As fall soundless sounds from Nature's
moon-gong. ”

“ Like Sleep, yielding to Dream's caresses.
[31]
26
In the deeps of Dream
O'er the pool of Sleep
A lone star her face
Seeking, with song-kindled eyes
Her Isle of Rest.
Across the dusky hills
The first flush of waking
Unfurls its silver banner
To signal the Isle for her:
She vanishes, as before, into the fading Night.
Thus the Eye of Life
Searches for the home of Peace
Night after night:
And when the sun of Death rises
It flees,—it loves its own night. ”

“ 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.
[15]
11 AT VENTURA, CALIFORNIA
The moon rises and washes the brine with silver ”

“ In a picture of light
Where nothing abides,
All things fade.
In fading there is beauty,
By shedding tears
We bathe our hearts—
Those crushed flowers full of smart—
For a deity not far from our souls. ”

“ The white conch [4] of the half-moon
Silent as though all worship's ceased,
No incense-perfume from the forest censer
The breeze brings; all still, like torrid noon.
I row in a black bark on a copper-colored sea,
The sun fades like a golden bubble in its deep;
Weariness the chart that I hold in my hand,
Weariness the tune of this evening melody.
[4] In a Hindu temple conch shells are blown during or at the close of a worship.
[43]
36
A call, not a song ”

“ On the pool's shadow-laden deeps.
[25]
21 SANATAN (THE ABSOLUTE) [3]
Our hopes that fail
Are but truths that set
To illumine other spirits on their pathway;
As our joys that come true
Are their far-off dreams,
That through the cadence of our life
Ring out their pent-up tunes.
Whatever dies—needs must live,
Whatever breathes doth die too;
But above death and life
Shines that High Light
Where all find rest,
Yet endlessly move.
[3] The word absolute is the synonym for the Sanskrit word Sanatan, meaning Eternal and Immutable Truth. ”

“ And called me from the deeps of time?
[81]
Recedes the bank of space;
Fades away even the unfilled time,
No light, no sound, not even a dream;
Yet who speaks through silence?
Who plays this music of night?
Like an intangible river it flows
With waves of shadow-sound
Between banks of mountainous silence—
O, who! who are you?
Light in a world of shadows,
Rainbow among sunless clouds,
Bark of song on this sea of silence,
O ferryman of the soul!
O Word on Infinite's scroll.
[82]
71 SHANTI [5]
Sleep shadows, sleep light ”