Sarojini Naidu

“ Where upon the champa boughs the champa buds are blowing;
To the koil-haunted river-isles where lotus lilies glisten,
The voices of the fairy folk are calling me: O listen!
Honey, child, honey, child, the world is full of pleasure,
Of bridal-songs and cradle-songs and sandal-scented leisure.
Your bridal robes are in the loom, silver and saffron glowing,
Your bridal cakes are on the hearth: O whither are you going?
The bridal-songs and cradle-songs have cadences of sorrow,
The laughter of the sun to-day, the wind of death to-morrow. ”

“ A spirit of too much fire in too frail a body, it was rarely that her desire was fully granted. But in Italy she found what she could not find in England, and from Italy her letters are radiant. "This Italy is made of gold," she writes from Florence, "the gold of dawn and daylight, the gold of the stars, and, now dancing in weird enchanting rhythms through this magic month of May, the gold of fireflies in the perfumed darkness—'aerial gold.' I long to catch the subtle music of their fairy dances and make a poem with a rhythm like the quick irregular wild flash of their sudden movements. ”

“ Your beauty wakens with the spring
To kindle these pomegranate groves.
TO A BUDDHA SEATED ON A LOTUS Lord Buddha, on thy Lotus-throne,
With praying eyes and hands elate,
What mystic rapture dost thou own,
Immutable and ultimate?
What peace, unravished of our ken,
Annihilate from the world of men?
The wind of change for ever blows
Across the tumult of our way,
To-morrow's unborn griefs depose
The sorrows of our yesterday.
Dream yields to dream, strife follows strife,
And Death unweaves the webs of Life. ”

“ In the East, maturity comes early; and this child had already lived through all a woman's life. But there was something else, something hardly personal, something which belonged to a consciousness older than the Christian, which I realised, wondered at, and admired, in her passionate tranquillity of mind, before which everything mean and trivial and temporary caught fire and burnt away in smoke. Her body was never without suffering, or her heart without conflict; but neither the body's weakness nor the heart's violence could disturb that fixed contemplation, as of Buddha on his lotus-throne. ”

“ She finds them "a little incomprehensible," "profound artists in all the subtle intricacies of fascination," and asks if these "incalculable frivolities and vanities and coquetries and caprices" are, to us, an essential part of their charm? And she watches them with amusement as they flutter about her, petting her as if she were a nice child, a child or a toy, not dreaming that she is saying to herself sorrowfully: "How utterly empty their lives must be of all spiritual beauty IF they are nothing more than they appear to be." ”

“ You flaunt your beauty in the rose, your glory in the dawn,
Your sweetness in the nightingale, your whiteness in the swan.
You haunt my waking like a dream, my slumber like a moon,
Pervade me like a musky scent, possess me like a tune. ”

“ It was the desire of beauty that made her a poet; her "nerves of delight" were always quivering at the contact of beauty. To those who knew her in England, all the life of the tiny figure seemed to concentrate itself in the eyes; they turned towards beauty as the sunflower turns towards the sun, opening wider and wider until one saw nothing but the eyes. ”

“ Would you weave your dim moan with the chantings of love at my feast?
Go back to your grave, O my Dream, under forests of snow,
Where a heart-riven child hid you once, seven aeons ago.
Who bade you arise from your darkness? I bid you depart! ”

“ She hangs like a star in the dew of our song;
She springs like a beam on the brow of the tide,
She falls like a tear from the eyes of a bride.
Lightly, O lightly we glide and we sing,
We bear her along like a pearl on a string. ”

“ Is it possible that I have written verses that are 'filled with beauty,' and is it possible that you really think them worthy of being given to the world? You know how high my ideal of Art is; and to me my poor casual little poems seem to be less than beautiful—I mean with that final enduring beauty that I desire. ”

“ But soon we must rise, O my heart, we must wander again
Into the war of the world and the strife of the throng;
Let us rise, O my heart, let us gather the dreams that remain,
We will conquer the sorrow of life with the sorrow of song. ”

“ Through echoing forest and echoing street,
With lutes in our hands ever-singing we roam,
All men are our kindred, the world is our home.
Our lays are of cities whose lustre is shed,
The laughter and beauty of women long dead ”

“ Rise, brothers, rise, the wakening skies pray to the morning lights
The wind lies asleep in the arms of the dawn like a child that has cried all night.
Come, let us gather our nets from the shore, and set our catamarans free,
To capture the leaping wealth of the tide, for we are the sons of the sea. ”

“ INDIAN LOVE-SONG
She
Like a serpent to the calling voice of flutes,
Glides my heart into thy fingers, O my Love!
Where the night-wind, like a lover, leans above
His jasmine-gardens and sirisha-bowers ”

“ When the earth falters and the waters swoon
With the implacable radiance of noon,
And in dim shelters koils hush their notes,
And the faint, thirsting blood in languid throats
Craves liquid succour from the cruel heat,
Buy fruit, buy fruit, steals down the panting street.
When twilight twinkling o'er the gay bazaars,
Unfurls a sudden canopy of stars,
When lutes are strung and fragrant torches lit
On white roof-terraces where lovers sit
Drinking together of life's poignant sweet,
Buy flowers, buy flowers, floats down the singing street. ”

“ A waiting hunter threw his dart,
And struck my lover through the heart:
Alas! alas! my lord is dead.
O little bride, why dost thou weep
With all the happy world asleep?
Alas! alas! my lord is dead! ”

“ THE POET'S LOVE-SONG
In noon-tide hours, O Love, secure and strong,
⁠I need thee not; mad dreams are mine to bind
⁠The world to my desire, and hold the wind
A voiceless captive to my conquering song. ”

“ My joys ungarnered, all my songs unsung,
And all my tears unshed.
Tarry a while, till I am satisfied
Of love and grief, of earth and altering sky;
Till all my human hungers are fulfilled,
O Death, I cannot die! ”

“ Gather and gleam round my delicate youth,
And I heard the song of the spirits of Truth;
To quench my longing I bent me low
By the streams of the spirits of Peace that flow
In that magical wood in the land of sleep. ”

“ Shall the blossom live when the tree is dead?
Life of my life, Death's bitter sword
Hath severed us like a broken word,
Rent us in twain who are but one . . .
Shall the flesh survive when the soul is gone? ”

“ The fireflies light the soundless panther's way
To tangled paths where shy gazelles are straying,
And parrot-plumes outshine the dying day.
O soft! the lotus-buds upon the stream
Are stirring like sweet maidens when they dream. ”

“ Send your pitchers afloat on the tide.
Gather the leaves ere the dawn be old.
Grind them in mortars of amber and gold,
The fresh green leaves of the henna-tree.
A kokila called from a henna-spray:
Lira! liree! Lira! liree! ”

“ Death is in truth the vital seed
Of your imperishable bloom.
Each new-born year the bulbuls sing
Their songs of your renascent loves;
Your beauty wakens with the spring
To kindle these pomegranate groves. ”

“ And exquisite, subtle and slow are the tinkle
and tread of their rhythmical, slumber-soft feet.
Now silent, now singing and swaying and swinging,
like blossoms that bend to the breezes or showers,
Now wantonly winding, they flash, now they
falter, and, lingering, languish in radiant
choir;
Their jewel-girt arms and warm, wavering, lily-long
fingers enchant through melodious hours,
Eyes ravished with rapture, celestially panting,
what passionate bosoms aflaming with fire! ”

“ O king, thy kingdom who from thee can wrest?
What fate shall dare uncrown thee from this breast,
O god-born lover, whom my love doth gird
And armour with impregnable delight
Of Hope's triumphant keen flame-carven sword? ”

“ But though no hand unsanctioned dares
Unveil the mysteries of her grace,
Time lifts the curtain unawares,
And Sorrow looks into her face...
Who shall prevent the subtle years,
Or shield a woman's eyes from tears? ”

“ Ranadheera, ætat 2.
Little lord of battle, hail
In your newly-tempered mail!
Learn to conquer, learn to fight
In the foremost flanks of right,
Like Valmiki's heroes bold,
Rubies girt in epic gold. ”

“ My father is a dreamer himself, a great dreamer, a great man whose life has been a magnificent failure. I suppose in the whole of India there are few men whose learning is greater than his, and I don't think there are many men more beloved. He has a great white beard and the profile of Homer, and a laugh that brings the roof down. ”

“ I have never known any one who seemed to exist on such "large draughts of intellectual day" as this child of seventeen, to whom one could tell all one's personal troubles and agitations, as to a wise old woman. ”

“ Rise, Mother, rise, regenerate from thy gloom,
And, like a bride high-mated with the spheres.
Beget new glories from thine ageless womb!
The nations that in fettered darkness weep
Crave thee to lead them where great mornings break.... ”

“ Be lowered to the wind's caress,
⁠The honeyed hyacinths complain,
And languish in a sweet distress.
And, when I pause, still groves among,
(Such loveliness is mine) a throng
⁠Of nightingales awake and strain
Their souls into a quivering song. ”

“ She remained in England, with an interval of travel in Italy, till 1898, studying first at King's College, London, then, till her health again broke down, at Girton. She returned to Hyderabad in September 1898, and in the December of that year, to the scandal of all India, broke through the bonds of caste, and married Dr. Naidu. "Do you know I have some very beautiful poems floating in the air," she wrote to me in 1904; "and if the gods are kind I shall cast my soul like a net and capture them, this year. If the gods are kind—and grant me a little measure of health. ”

“ Every one thinks I am so nice and cheerful, so 'brave,' all the banal things that are so comfortable to be. My mother knows me only as 'such a tranquil child, but so strong-willed.' A tranquil child!" And she writes again, with deeper significance: "I too have learnt the subtle philosophy of living from moment to moment. ”

“ Whither dost thou hide from the magic of my flute-call?
In what moonlight-tangled meshes of perfume,
Where the clustering keovas guard the squirrel's slumber,
Where the deep woods glimmer with the jasmine's bloom? ”

“ Nay, no longer ye may linger
⁠With your laughter-lighted faces,
Now I am a thought-worn singer
⁠In life's high and lonely places.
Fairy fancies, fly away,
⁠To bright wind-inwoven spaces,
Fly away! ”

“ And kindled the flame of the tulip buds,
When bees grew loud and the days grew long,
And the peach groves thrilled to the oriole's song,
Queen Gulnaar sat on her ivory bed,
Decking with jewels her exquisite head ”

“ And so the past becomes a mountain-cell,
Where lone, apart, old hermit-memories dwell
In consecrated calm, forgotten yet
Of the keen heart that hastens to forget
Old longings in fulfilling new desires. ”

“ Children, ye have not lived, ye but exist
Till some resistless hour shall rise and move
Your hearts to wake and hunger after love,
And thirst with passionate longing for the things
That burn your brows with blood-red sufferings. ”