Sarojini Naidu's Popular Poems

 Love Song from the North 

Tell me no more of thy love, papeeha,
Wouldst thou recall to my heart, papeeha,
Dreams of delight that are gone,
When swift to my side came the feet of my lover
With stars of the dusk and the dawn?
I see the soft wings of the clouds on the river,
And jewelled with raindrops the mango-leaves quiver,
And tender boughs flower on the plain.....
But what is their beauty to me, papeeha,
Beauty of blossom and shower, papeeha,
That brings not my lover again?
Tell me no more of thy love, papeeha,
Wouldst thou revive in my heart, papeeha
Grief for the joy that is gone?
I hear the bright peacock in glimmering woodlands
Cry to its mate in the dawn;
I hear the black koel's slow, tremulous wooing,
And sweet in the gardens the calling and cooing
Of passionate bulbul and dove....
But what is their music to me, papeeha
Songs of their laughter and love, papeeha,
To me, forsaken of love?


A Rajput Love Song 


(Parvati at her lattice)
O Love! were you a basil-wreath to twine
among my tresses,
A jewelled clasp of shining gold to bind around my sleeve,
O Love! were you the keora's soul that haunts
my silken raiment,
A bright, vermilion tassel in the girdles that I weave;


O Love! were you the scented fan
that lies upon my pillow,
A sandal lute, or silver lamp that burns before my shrine,
Why should I fear the jealous dawn
that spreads with cruel laughter,
Sad veils of separation between your face and mine?


Haste, O wild-bee hours, to the gardens of the sun set!
Fly, wild-parrot day, to the orchards of the west!
Come, O tender night, with your sweet,
consoling darkness,
And bring me my Beloved to the shelter of my breast!
(Amar Singh in the saddle)


O Love! were you the hooded hawk upon my hand
that flutters,
Its collar-band of gleaming bells atinkle as I ride,
O Love! were you a turban-spray or
floating heron-feather,
The radiant, swift, unconquered sword
that swingeth at my side;


O Love! were you a shield against the
arrows of my foemen,
An amulet of jade against the perils of the way,
How should the drum-beats of the dawn
divide me from your bosom,
Or the union of the midnight be ended with the day?


Haste, O wild-deer hours, to the meadows of the sunset!
Fly, wild stallion day, to the pastures of the west!
Come, O tranquil night, with your soft,
consenting darkness,
And bear me to the fragrance of my Beloved's breast!


Alabaster 

LIKE this alabaster box whose art

Is frail as a cassia-flower, is my heart,

Carven with delicate dreams and wrought

With many a subtle and exquisite thought.

Therein I treasure the spice and scent

Of rich and passionate memories blent

Like odours of cinnamon, sandal and clove,

Of song and sorrow and life and love.

An Indian Love Song 

He

Lift up the veils that darken the delicate moon

of thy glory and grace,

Withhold not, O love, from the night

of my longing the joy of thy luminous face,

Give me a spear of the scented keora

guarding thy pinioned curls,

Or a silken thread from the fringes

that trouble the dream of thy glimmering pearls;

Faint grows my soul with thy tresses' perfume

and the song of thy anklets' caprice,

Revive me, I pray, with the magical nectar

that dwells in the flower of thy kiss.

She

How shall I yield to the voice of thy pleading,

how shall I grant thy prayer,

Or give thee a rose-red silken tassel,

a scented leaf from my hair?

Or fling in the flame of thy heart's desire the veils that cover my face,

Profane the law of my father's creed for a foe

of my father's race?

Thy kinsmen have broken our sacred altars and slaughtered our sacred kine,

The feud of old faiths and the blood of old battles sever thy people and mine.

He

What are the sins of my race, Beloved,

what are my people to thee?

And what are thy shrines, and kine and kindred,

what are thy gods to me?

Love recks not of feuds and bitter follies,

of stranger, comrade or kin,

Alike in his ear sound the temple bells

and the cry of the muezzin.

For Love shall cancel the ancient wrong

and conquer the ancient rage,

Redeem with his tears the memoried sorrow

that sullied a bygone age.

Autumn Song 

Like a joy on the heart of a sorrow,

The sunset hangs on a cloud;

A golden storm of glittering sheaves,

Of fair and frail and fluttering leaves,

The wild wind blows in a cloud.

Hark to a voice that is calling

To my heart in the voice of the wind:

My heart is weary and sad and alone,

For its dreams like the fluttering leaves have gone,

And why should I stay behind?

Cradle Song

FROM groves of spice,

O'er fields of rice,

Athwart the lotus-stream,

I bring for you,

Aglint with dew

A little lovely dream.

Sweet, shut your eyes,

The wild fire-fiies

Dance through the fairy neem;

From the poppy-bole

For you I stole

A little lovely dream.

Dear eyes, good-night,

In golden light

The stars around you gleam;

On you I press

With soft caress

A little lovely dream.

In Praise Of Henna 

A KOKILA called from a henna-spray:

Lira! liree! Lira! liree!

Hasten, maidens, hasten away

To gather the leaves of the henna-tree.

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!

Hasten maidens, hasten away

To gather the leaves of the henna-tree.

The tilka's red for the brow of a bride,

And betel-nut's red for lips that are sweet;

But, for lily-like fingers and feet,

The red, the red of the henna-tree.

In Salutation to the Eternal Peace 

Men say the world is full of fear and hate,

And all life's ripening harvest-fields await

The restless sickle of relentless fate.

But I, sweet Soul, rejoice that I was born,

When from the climbing terraces of corn

I watch the golden orioles of Thy morn.

What care I for the world's desire and pride,

Who know the silver wings that gleam and glide,

The homing pigeons of Thine eventide?

What care I for the world's loud weariness,

Who dream in twilight granaries Thou dost bless

With delicate sheaves of mellow silences?

Say, shall I heed dull presages of doom,

Or dread the rumoured loneliness and gloom,

The mute and mythic terror of the tomb?

For my glad heart is drunk and drenched with Thee,

O inmost wind of living ecstasy!

O intimate essence of eternity!

In The Forest 

HERE, O my heart, let us burn the dear dreams that are dead,

Here in this wood let us fashion a funeral pyre

Of fallen white petals and leaves that are mellow and red,

Here let us burn them in noon's flaming torches of fire.

We are weary, my heart, we are weary, so long we have borne

The heavy loved burden of dreams that are dead, let us rest,

Let us scatter their ashes away, for a while let us mourn;

We will rest, O my heart, till the shadows are gray in the west.

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.

Indian Weavers 

WEAVERS, weaving at break of day,

Why do you weave a garment so gay? . . .

Blue as the wing of a halcyon wild,

We weave the robes of a new-born child.

Weavers, weaving at fall of night,

Why do you weave a garment so bright? . . .

Like the plumes of a peacock, purple and green,

We weave the marriage-veils of a queen.

Weavers, weaving solemn and still,

What do you weave in the moonlight chill? . . .

White as a feather and white as a cloud,

We weave a dead man's funeral shroud.

Life

CHILDREN, ye have not lived, to you it seems

Life is a lovely stalactite of dreams,

Or carnival of careless joys that leap

About your hearts like billows on the deep

In flames of amber and of amethyst.

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.

Till ye have battled with great grief and fears,

And borne the conflict of dream-shattering years,

Wounded with fierce desire and worn with strife,

Children, ye have not lived: for this is life.

My Dead Dream 

HAVE YOU found me, at last, O my Dream? Seven eons ago

You died and I buried you deep under forests of snow.

Why have you come hither? Who bade you awake from your sleep

And track me beyond the cerulean foam of the deep?

Would you tear from my lintels these sacred green garlands of leaves?

Would you scare the white, nested, wild pigeons of joy from my eaves?

Would you touch and defile with dead fingers the robes of my priest?

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 eons ago.

Who bade you arise from your darkness? I bid you depart!

Profane not the shrines I have raised in the clefts of my heart.

Past and Future 

The new hath come and now the old retires:

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.

And now the Soul stands in a vague, intense

Expectancy and anguish of suspense,

On the dim chamber-threshold . . . lo! he sees

Like a strange, fated bride as yet unknown,

His timid future shrinking there alone,

Beneath her marriage-veil of mysteries.

Song Of A Dream 

ONCE in the dream of a night I stood

Lone in the light of a magical wood,

Soul-deep in visions that poppy-like sprang;

And spirits of Truth were the birds that sang,

And spirits of Love were the stars that glowed,

And spirits of Peace were the streams that flowed

In that magical wood in the land of sleep.

Lone in the light of that magical grove,

I felt the stars of the spirits of Love

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.

Street Cries 

WHEN dawn's first cymbals beat upon the sky, 

Rousing the world to labour's various cry,

To tend the flock, to bind the mellowing grain,

From ardent toil to forge a little gain,

And fasting men go forth on hurrying feet,

Buy bread, buy bread, rings down the eager street.

When the earth falters and the waters swoon

With the implacable radiance of noon,

And in dim shelters koïls 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.

Suttee 

LAMP of my life, the lips of Death

Hath blown thee out with their sudden breath;

Naught shall revive thy vanished spark . . .

Love, must I dwell in the living dark?

Tree of my life, Death's cruel foot

Hath crushed thee down to thy hidden root;

Nought shall restore thy glory fled . . .

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 Indian Gipsy

IN tattered robes that hoard a glittering trace 

Of bygone colours, broidered to the knee,

Behold her, daughter of a wandering race,

Tameless, with the bold falcon's agile grace,

And the lithe tiger's sinuous majesty.

With frugal skill her simple wants she tends,

She folds her tawny heifers and her sheep

On lonely meadows when the daylight ends,

Ere the quick night upon her flock descends

Like a black panther from the caves of sleep.

Time's river winds in foaming centuries

Its changing, swift, irrevocable course

To far off and incalculable seas;

She is twin-born with primal mysteries,

And drinks of life at Time's forgotten source

The Poet To Death 

TARRY a while, O Death, I cannot die

While yet my sweet life burgeons with its spring;

Fair is my youth, and rich the echoing boughs

Where dhadikulas sing.

Tarry a while, O Death, I cannot die

With all my blossoming hopes unharvested,

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!

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.

I need thee not, I am content with these:

Keep silence in thy soul, beyond the seas!

But in the desolate hour of midnight, when

An ectasy of starry silence sleeps

And my soul hungers for thy voice, O then,

Love, like the magic of wild melodies,

Let thy soul answer mine across the seas.

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.

For us the travail and the heat,

The broken secrets of our pride,

The strenuous lessons of defeat,

The flower deferred, the fruit denied;

But not the peace, supremely won,

Lord Buddha, of thy Lotus-throne.

With futile hands we seek to gain

Our inaccessible desire,

Diviner summits to attain,

With faith that sinks and feet that tire;

But nought shall conquer or control

The heavenward hunger of our soul.

The end, elusive and afar,

Still lures us with its beckoning flight,

And all our mortal moments are

A session of the Infinite.

How shall we reach the great, unknown

Nirvana of thy Lotus-throne?

To India 

O YOUNG through all thy immemorial years!

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 . . . .

Mother, O Mother, wherefore dost thou sleep?

Arise and answer for thy children's sake!

Thy Future calls thee with a manifold sound

To crescent honours, splendours, victories vast;

Waken, O slumbering Mother and be crowned,

Who once wert empress of the sovereign Past.

To My Children 

Jaya Surya

GOLDEN sun of victory, born

In my life's unclouded morn,

In my lambent sky of love,

May your growing glory prove

Sacred to your consecration,

To my heart and to my nation.

Sun of victory, may you be

Sun of song and liberty.

Padmaja

Lotus-maiden, you who claim

All the sweetness of your name,

Lakshmi, fortune's queen, defend you,

Lotus-born like you, and send you

Balmy moons of love to bless you,

Gentle joy-winds to caress you.

Lotus-maiden, may you be

Fragrant of all ecstasy.

Ranadheera

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.

Lord of battle, may you be,

Lord of love and chivalry.

Lilamani

Limpid jewel of delight

Severed from the tender night

Of your sheltering mother-mine,

Leap and sparkle, dance and shine,

Blithely and securely set

In love's magic coronet.

Living jewel, may you be

Laughter-bound and sorrow-free.

To The God of Pain 

UNWILLING priestess in thy cruel fane,

Long hast thou held me, pitiless god of Pain,

Bound to thy worship by reluctant vows,

My tired breast girt with suffering, and my brows

Anointed with perpetual weariness.

Long have I borne thy service, through the stress

Of rigorous years, sad days and slumberless nights,

Performing thine inexorable rites.

For thy dark altars, balm nor milk nor rice,

But mine own soul thou'st ta'en for sacrifice:

All the rich honey of my youth's desire,

And all the sweet oils from my crushed life drawn,

And all my flower-like dreams and gem-like fire

Of hopes up-leaping like the light of dawn.

I have no more to give, all that was mine

Is laid, a wrested tribute, at thy shrine;

Let me depart, for my whole soul is wrung,

And all my cheerless orisons are sung;

Let me depart, with faint limbs let me creep

To some dim shade and sink me down to sleep.

Village Song 

HONEY, child, honey, child, whither are you going? 

Would you cast your jewels all to the breezes blowing?

Would you leave the mother who on golden grain has fed you?

Would you grieve the lover who is riding forth to wed you?

Mother mine, to the wild forest I am going,

Where upon the champa boughs the champa buds are blowing;

To the köil-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.

Far sweeter sound the forest-notes where forest-streams are falling;

O mother mine, I cannot stay, the fairy-folk are calling.

Wandering singers

WHERE the voice of the wind calls our wandering feet,

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;

The sword of old battles, the crown of old kings,

And happy and simple and sorrowful things.

What hope shall we gather, what dreams shall we sow?

Where the wind calls our wandering footsteps we go.

No love bids us tarry, no joy bids us wait:

The voice of the wind is the voice of our fate.