1
Peace, clamorous trumpets! Silence, drums!
Be breathless all and hush!
Let die applause. My lady comes,
My lady of the blush.
She’s bashfuller than dew to hide,
Or dew-hung drooping rose.
Down-bent she keeps her queenly head,
Her eyes down-lidded close.
Of sentient fibre to the quick
She trembles, shrinks from praise.
To look on her too earnestly
Sets all her cheek ablaze.
Cease, gazing eyes, to disconcert
Her holy modesty;
And you, my songs, with shamefast awe
Her pomp accompany.
2
My rose, she blushes to be praised,
She wonders to be fair.
My lily of her pale pure bloom
Is shyly unaware.
At clear stars, water, woods, the flowers,
She looks with great wide eyes.
The world to her a marvel is,
And life a rich surprise.
Yet the prime marvel, what I find
In her to love, makes shine
Open in wistful wonder large
Her childlike eyes divine.
Is it mockery or flattery?
Her dear look puzzled says;
So utterly unconscious she
Of her own loveliness.
3
In your perfection secretly
I longed some fault to see ;
Some frailty, that this hopeless gulf
Might bridge ‘twixt you and me.
I found the foible, thought I found;
For when your eyes I praised,
They laughed with pleasure, yet a blush
Rebuked the joy I raised.
In that rich crimson some small tinge
Of conscious pride might be.
I but a new perfection found,
Your lovely modesty.
The virgin glory of a blush
Made you more perfect flower.
Still must your rich humanity
Above me seem to tower.
4
Transparent as some lake, and calm
As mountain torrent’s rest,
You keep the maidhood of the soul,
The childhood of the breast.
Around you in blue mystery
The eternal mountains lean,
Shoulder each other, rise to catch
The depths of your serene;
And down to you the happy brooks,
A hundred laughters, come
To find in your pellucid depth
Peace, purity, a home.
Though fast the trembling torrents rush,
Play, babble, without cease,
They deepen but your limpid hush,
They add but to your peace.
5
Subtraction were detraction, dear,
Multiplication tires,
And to divide perfection’s sum
Were tasking angel-lyres.
I would in moments, Time’s poor slave,
Your millioned worth make shine;
You lie beyond the shot of praise,
Or slander’s counter-mine.
I do but vex arithmetic
With details of delight,
And shiver into fragments up
Your perfect chrysolite.
Vain torment of the pen, though sweet!
For after all is done,
Unknown, enchanting you remain,
Forever whole and one.
6
The weakness of a woman’s strength
You have, Love, you are frail
Only as harebells tremble soft,
As creepers catch and trail.
The lovely pliant strength is yours
To yield, yet win your ends.
You have the weeping sympathy
With which the willow bends;
The witchery of freakish fault,
Caprice and waywardness,
Allies you to our human earth,
Endearing weaknesses.
The richness of the garden soil
You show. All noble seeds
Flower in your nature, nor disdain
Some wild and random weeds.
7
The violets unforgettable
Of those dark lovely eyes
Upon my spirit vaguely bloom,
With colour tantalise.
I strive to paint on baffled sight
The mystery of their hue.
Black are they, pansies of delight?
Black? Purple? darkest blue?
Those undeterminable hints
Are colour’s sanctuary.
To hide from us inviolable
The world’s dear mystery.
What spirit, the angel of your eyes,
Sits there invisible,
Their infinite deep shining darks
May hint, but never tell?
8
Dear, when I look within your eyes,
What heaven do I see?
What starry glorious universe
That gazes down on me?
Infinite distance there I see,
And soaring oft see burn
Orion with his belt severe
And sworded brilliance stern;
And oft to baffle sight almost,
Radiant and soft, while flees
Their dovelike shimmer, peers the host
Of the sweet Pleiades;
And then, when tender gloaming dusks
The evening of your eyes,
I see the lonely star of Love,
The planet Venus rise.
9
Tell me what sage astronomy
May fathom those fair eyes,
Where still profounder depths elude
And show yet deeper skies.
There, past the eagle’s sparkling wings,
And past the swan I soar,
And past the Pegasean flight
Those heavenly deeps explore.
That glorious arch of streaming looks,
Your spirit’s milky way,
Love, I have dared, and dreamed beyond,
With these poor eyes of clay.
Yet never could I gauge as yet
The distance infinite
It takes one heavenly look of yours
To shine down to my sight.
10
Was she not graceful, formed so fair?
Could I her shape exalt
Or God’s hand save from faultlessness
Yet keep without a fault?
Not tall, her stature seemed the rule
To inch perfection by.
Beauty, whate’er her attitude,
Stood with her just so high.
O sweet proportion! How shall I
Describe her going’s grace?
Slow was it, stately, gliding? Nay,
‘Twas hers and beauty’s pace.
So perfectly in her God blent
The mean that never cloys,
To hold my heart in balances
And keep admiring poise.
11
O fair as hawthorn buds are fair!
O pure as privet meek
With thy complexion shall I dare
The snowdrop’s spotless cheek?
She winnowed whiteness. Radiance’ self
Had touched the common day,
Silvered the world with some rare dawn
That was her spirit’s ray.
The laughter, the simplicity
Of sunlight, what is it?
The rainbow’s glory of all hues,
The candour infinite!
So the eternal soul-blanch, she,–
Olympus, awful snow,–
To sheen to mortals, took life’s prism,–
Iris-like below.
12
I think God meant that youth should fire
To beauty his bright dream,
That with his pomp of loveliness
Our passion too might stream.
So flowery He the pitfall makes,
So sure he sets the gin,
Some glorious purpose beauty hides
To have our hearts fall in.
What are these mighty heavens he pranked
With stars? What azure day?
What sunset? What this orb of things,
This rondure? Who shall say?
I know that to besiege my thoughts
Your face he framed so fair,
Tangled so rich and massed like storm
That purple cloud of hair.
13
Who is it talks of ebony,
Who of the raven’s plume?
The glory of your tresses black
Will yield to neither room.
So thick the ambrosial dusk of you
Glooms in your locks, soul, sight,
The world itself is swallowed up
In darkness and delight.
Tell me no more that black must be
Light’s baffle, colour’s loss.
Your tresses shoot into the sun
A richly purple gloss.
It was the sunshine white of you
Which cast that wealth of shade.
There from the burning light of you
The world and I am laid.
14
I think a soul-shape grows behind
Your body’s screening view.
‘Tis what the deathless sculptor, Life,
Carves out of what is you.
Your essence, spiritual stuff,
Laughter, thought, effort, will,
Joy, suffering, all you feel, think, do,
Like Parian marble still
Life chisels, the ulterior you,
Brow, cheek angelical,
And figure on life’s handsome mould
Modelled till it excel.
Then when the atom-quarried mask
You drop, shall beam to sight
The dear familiar face I know,
Grown deathless, infinite!
15
Age and decay, ply, ply your powers,
Assault her beauty. She,
That which she is, what inly flowers,
For ever blooms, is free.
Rain, sorrow, down those lovely cheeks!
Stream your remorseless flood!
You drench deep, happy roots, to make
Her spirit freshly bud.
Parch, fever’s burning eye, this park,
This greensward beautiful,
Her flesh ; the eternal violet
Lies caverned, mossy, cool;
It trembles ineradicable,
That harebell sweet ; it grows.
Rough winds but shake down the dead leaves
That feed the deathless rose.
16
And do they perish, the fair flowers
This blushing come-and-go
Of roses, that so crimson burn,
Of lilies, pure as snow?
Dust, nothing, they? Such vital charm,
Such bloom? It cannot be!
They too, like us, are spirits clothed
For thought, joy, agony.
They too, though stirless, souls that live
In the eternal life,
Take armour, fragrantly enlist,
Sweet soldiers, to the strife,
Here in the battle beautiful,
Where fights the universe,
To God’s far dream, the unknown good,
The bliss without a curse.
17
Is all we know, then, that we know
Nothing? For certain, yes.
Yet your face time’s arch-riddle put.
We risk a pregnant guess.
No more deep-browed philosophy
Questions the world, content
To read its secret in your smile,
The secret that God meant.
Vision, dream, beauty, that far search,
Perfection, through all time,
Poets forget, to muse upon
Your eyebrow’s married rhyme;
And sculpture finds in your soft chin,
And painting in your cheek
The eternal rose of mystery
Ever on point to speak.
(Manmohan Ghose)
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Based on Topics: Love Poems, Life Poems, World Poems, Light Poems, Mind Poems, Sadness Poems, Time Poems, Soul Poems, Nature Poems, War & Peace Poems, Joy & Excitement PoemsBased on Keywords: enlist, screening, angelical, darks, profounder, unforgettable, dusks, modelled, waywardness, pranked, freakish