1
Her eyes were not of amethyst,
Her teeth were not of pearl.
Human all over, laughing, crying,
Shrewd, simple, just a girl!
Cheerful at the board’s head she sat,
Meek in the firelight dreamed.
The shining angel she suppressed,
And only woman seemed.
She took me off my guard with smiles;
Her kindness lulled alarm;
She blinded me with lovely looks
And tender simple charm:
But a wild glory lit her ways,
Her every act had wings.
Each smile, each look, each motion threw
Seraphic haloings.
2
Soft, slowly soft, to my awed sight
And soul the vision grew.
No fault of mine, no frailty dashed
Her tranquil look. She knew!
Her steadfast sweetness mocked surprise,
So humbly she forgave.
A spirit she seemed, in majesty
Of meekness armed to save.
Once only with a grieving look
The goddess she betrayed,
Like Psyche when the lamp to her
Love’s sleeping form displayed.
I trembled both for joy and dread;
A glory from above,
A daughter of the Eternal, I
Had wedded, dared to love.
3
A fragrance of rich homeliness
You breathe, so lovely rare,
Dulce domum the whole house cries
And “home, sweet home,” the air.
The very doors unwillingly
Shut after you; “She comes,”
Floor, rafter, the dear walls, each thing,
At your sweet entrance hums.
No flashy stranger in her house,
No gad-about they know.
The homely odour of your dress
Proclaims you as you go.
And “our queen” now the parlour cries,
And “ours” the drawing-room;
They know who brings the rich content,
Who banishes the gloom.
4
Muse of my worship, lean from heaven,
And touch my trembling lyre.
I cannot sing your heavenly worth
Unless you give the fire.
Nay, take the instrument from me,
And sweep the chords along.
Be, love, your own sweet poetess,
And be yourself the song.
You build the verses. Thoughts and words,
It is from you they come:
Your beauties, virtues, sing themselves.
What need for me to sum?
Be but your silent self, and you
Are poesy, the theme
And source exhaustless of all song.
You are your poet’s dream.
5
Her heart, that native diamond,
Out of her bosom’s mine
Frankly she gave me, as it were
A toy, that gem divine!
Of purest water its rare worth
Lay, clouded, till I met
Love, the wise jeweller, to cut,
Polish for me and set.
He took and rubbed with hard distress,
The diamond dust of pain,
Her heart’s rough native worth, until
It shone and shone again.
Now in a thousand facets cut,
It sparkles out at me,
The brilliance of eternal love,
Eternal constancy.
6
When of your holy constancy,
Your faithful heart I tell,
I think of no hard lofty pose,
Alas, too frangible!
You were not coldly dutiful,
A rock mid dashing seas;
You opened to the beautiful,
You swayed upon the breeze.
The sunshine of your joy you spilled
In smiles on everyone,
Your warm heart brimmed in friendships frank
And joyous as the sun,
But still, mid frolic mirth, to me
A soft look stole, to say
Show where your heart was casketed
Deep from the gaudy day.
7
When virtue and yourself I name,
It is a word too bleak,
Too gaunt and steely, life’s rich play–
Your living worth–to speak.
Your character I paint. But life
Sings in your words and deeds.
What I in rigid moulds would cast
Escapes : the statue bleeds.
Your qualities are sentient things,
Elusive and alive;
Virtues, but still the lotus needs
Low nature’s mud, to thrive.
When I have called you woman meek,
Wise mother, perfect wife,
Your own sweet mystery still you are
And God’s, his secret Life.
8
Let me not to hard diamond
Compare your virtue, dear,
Who softer than a moonbeam are,
More tender than a tear.
He who would sum the life, the charm,
The magic, that is you,
Must catch the distance of the star,
The tremble of the dew.
To sunset’s gorgeous langour he
Must add the morn’s fresh ray,
And all the sparkling hush of night.
And all the blaze of day.
Such is your sheen, no diamond
Your heart, though true as steel,
No hardness has. A look, a word,
Would break it, ne’er to heal.
9
I must not call her mirthful; sad
She was not. No extremes
Might shake her charmed sobriety
Or cloud-enchanting gleams.
For if thought saddened on her brow,
‘Twas April in her blood;
Archly her rippling mirth would break
The melancholy mood.
So perfectly from cloud to shine
Her temperate nature ran,
That sunshine might not know where shade,
Nor shade where sun began.
As some she was not coldly gay;
Too near her heart to earth!
‘Twas laughter rich with sympathy,
‘Twas tear-drops dashed with mirth.
10
Music you loved; it was your life.
No new song, lovely air,
But you straight caught and hummed, as though
You in its secret were.
Thy mystery of melody
Was in your pulse of being:
Far heavenly chimings lit your eyes,
And song to you was seeing.
Colour had music’s life to you.
The very grasses sang,
To you the cosmic organ peal
In diapason rang.
God framed of harmony entire
That piece of music, you,
To be to yourself lyrical
In all you say or do.
11
At your unworshipped deity
I rage, I fill with shame.
Wildly I think to all the world
Your glory to proclaim.
To find salvation in your smile,
In your look paradise,
A zealot in that blissful faith
I would the world baptise;
Spread my own joy. Therefore my songs
Like fiery prophets go,–
Make to her beauty proselytes
Mortality and woe.
Let blind men see those lovely looks,
The deaf her laughter hear,
Wash in her living charm the soul
Of either hemisphere.
12
Mimnermus, Smyrna’s tender bard,
The sweet Ionian, sang
Of Nanno. To his mournful lyre
He chanted love’s rich pang,–
Our short-lived youth, old age that comes
So soon, so swift youth’s bliss,
All that in our strange, human lot
Familiar sorrow is.
And Nanno, Nanno, on the chords
Sobb’d, ever went and came
Nanno, the lovely flute-player,
Who touched his soul to flame.
Dead and divine, her name he gave
His tender elegies,
As I to these the name whose sound
Is love’s and ecstasy’s.
13
Be still our standard-bearer brave,
A beacon to the free!
Be still the rally to all fact,
All truth, all loyalty!
I ask not that a compelling bond
You keep, to me be true.
I am unworthy to unloose
The latchet of your shoe.
I am unworthy, love, to touch
Ground you have glorified.
Your estimation takes no blot;
I urge not honour’s pride.
But should you waver, you, who lead
The vanguard where drums beat,
How shall the host of hell come on,
Heaven’s armies sound retreat!
14
Not only doth infinity
Brood on our hearts. It sighs
Through nature–all this mournful heave
Of earth, those yearning skies,
The illimitable hollow, sad,
Blue space of heaven august,
Stooping in awful sympathy
Over this ail of dust.
And star fires tremble it; the trees
Feel in their branches groan
World-old indignity, some gash
Remembered in the moan
Of the wild wind, and in the seethe
And surge of ocean’s pain;
That sundering rift and chasm, of which
Our lonely hearts complain.
15
Stars, universes, might that moves
Guided by system, law,
Inexorable, deaf, my soul
You shall not overawe.
Earth, on thy breast I know not whence
I came, what powers to thank,
Nor whither, sun, thy glorious beams
Conduct me. All is blank.
We, too, are planets wandering
Like the round globe we tread;
Each soul a tiny universe,
With vastness round us spread.
Though blind we rush, what matter? God
Guides through the boundless ether.
What matter if, like earth and moon,
We go, love, still together?
16
Paean of immortality,
Godward peal of praise!
Ring, ring within my mortal ears,
My fainting spirit raise!
I falter, flag in the great rhythm
That thunders up to bliss:
I tremble, in this chime of worlds
One little voice to miss.
Hard, hard in Nature’s choral praise
1 find my part to bear,
Since one soft lute, her gentle voice,
Her laugh, I cannot hear.
The sun may give his golden shout,
Her silver song the moon,
And brook and bird chime in; but I
Am jangled, out of tune.
17
It was to others that she spoke
Kindly in words. To me
The lavish silence of her look
Reserved its oratory.
For oft from casual speech I felt
The glory of her gaze,
Sidelong with starry secrecies,
My beating heart amaze;
How oft, to greet me, send a ray
From those dark depths, my heaven,
Millioned with thought-fires to my look
Sweet answers hath she given.
Now she is gone, from heaven itself
The angels of her eyes
Visit my heart’s vexed loneliness
With comforting replies.
18
My drooping flower, my Maloti,
Your dear head hang not so !
You wither on the stem, alas !
But tell me, then, your woe.
You gaze upon me speechless, dumb.
The sorrow that constricts
Your throat no utterance gives, to tell
What ’tis your heart afflicts.
It is that old hysteria’s ail,
The cost that woman pays
To bring forth children. With your night
You have increased the days’
Gloom, silence! Is it thus He meeds
Your motherhood sublime,
With your birth-throes and agony
To new-stock failing time?
19
Look, as some long-lost glorious star
From where it sinks to sight
Shoots a far-travelled splendid ray,
The after-age to light;
So through the wreck of beauty gone
Your bright look comes to me;
Surviving angels, your dear eyes,
Still illumine memory.
How can the glory that was you
Still light my soul, a sun,
And you, the glory-shooter, you,
Whelm’d, sunk in oblivion?
Its splendour was the star. Your soul,
The real of you, survives,
Homes to the spirit; ray on ray
For ever still arrives.
20
“What is that vast eternity
In your dear eyes begun?”
I asked, she answered, “‘Tis to see
From God’s side of the sun.”
“And our sad world?” ” It is the same
Eternity, but seen
Through a glass dimly-tarnished, flashed
A duller gold and green.”
“And can the beatific, bright,
Sheen prospect sorrow move?”
“We see the whole world in the light
Of pity and of love.”
A hero now I see you, dear;
Know what our last life meant;
With larger eyes compassionate
I see, and am content.
(Manmohan Ghose)
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Based on Topics: Love Poems, God Poems, Life Poems, World Poems, Night Poems, Light Poems, Mind Poems, Sadness Poems, Time Poems, Soul Poems, Nature PoemsBased on Keywords: facets, estimation, afflicts, beatific, diapason, motherhood, smyrna, poetess, flashy, godward, archly