Beautiful dancer upon the wind of the life in thy fluttering
wings,
O mingle of breeze and sunlight, whose glancing gaiety
sings
Of the heavenly life, and my soul on the vergfc of invisible
things!
Heavy but now I wandered my garden of melancholy.
Sad as a clod was my heart and meaningless, trivial, a
folly
Past speaking, earth and sky and water and winds at
volley;
Left lonely of thee, the light of the air, with thy presence
unillumed,
Cold was the sunlight’s glory, as dawn had perished
unbloomed:
A mournful pall was the day and all things in darkness
entombed.
Mute of thy voice an echo, an echo despairing and
hollow.
Sound but seemed in thy tones, thou life of music to
follow,
Beauty, whose warm sun thou wast, had after thee gone
like a swallow.
Dead was the beautiful shiver of leaves, and the lovely
swaying of flowers;
Dead without pride man’s beauty, his motion, the something
that towers.
Like a dead leaf I drifted, a dream in the noontide hours.
She has taken with her the rustle, the movement and
the shimmer,
The glide and the dart of birds and the woodland’s
dusking glimmer:
Life was the ripple of her; the fire in things turns
dimmer.
For she was the charm and the mystery, the magic of it
all,
Earth’s secret soul of delight : She is gone beyond recall !
And autumn demurs to linger and wanes and crisps to
the fall.
Only of her deserted, the sole thing left unwilling,
Behind her I hesitate, some desolate fate fulfilling;
In the yellowing fall I linger and wait for the winter’s
chilling.
When shall I go too, and be housed in thy ashes’ sympathy,
With dust and silence entomb, this rusting anchor free,
Wreck and sunder, descend to the blissful nothing of
thee?
For nothing, I think, but slumber awaits us there, nor a
vernal
Visiting wind shall reach us; a sleep, a silence eternal;
Since nothing returns of thee, not a breath, not a hint
supernal.
Oh, could aught, if the soul survived, from my longing
hold thee apart,
To thy love’s visiting sweetness should I not suddenly
start,
Leap to a ghost of thy grace and fold thee to my heart?
As thus I spoke despairing, a beautiful apparition
Hovered and glanced in my path, a winged glory, a
vision
That mocked me on fluttering wings and held me up to
derision.
Large black wings, I knew them once, streaked white
o’er the swallow-tail,
Wings on the air’s wide ocean me, lonely voyager, hail.
Whence and whither, O frigate of beauty crowded with
sail?
Once or twice I have seen thee, a flash, for a moment
hover
On a gust of thy buoyant reserve, and ere my heart
could recover
That shock of enchanted surprise, the vision; the glory
was over.
But now before me undismayed, as if something should
restrain
That shy proud fear of my presence to hover away in
disdain,
Fluttering close I saw thee, thou sail of the distance,
remain.
Breathless I stood and fearful, in my wonder softly
enchanted.
To and fro it fluttered to the flower-bush she had planted,
The flower called King of Fragrance with her holy
memory haunted.
To and fro and back again! The beautiful life of its
wings
Shook out my crumpled soul: wild thinkings, imaginings,
Stirred delighted and conscious from a yearning blackmess
of things.
My spirit, wintering sadly in a brown despair of nature,
Stirred in its dream of death, shook off its eyeless disfeature,
In a fluttering sympathy woke and danced with that
beautiful creature.
In and out of the branches green, then down it fluttered
aswoon
To sit on the fern Himalayan, outspread reposing; but
soon.
Held its large black wings to the languid afternoon.
That flaunting plume of verdure her own white hands had
planted:
There it sat, nor stirred. What magic wand had enchanted
The splendour on wings to sit where her holy memory
haunted?
Oh, could it know my dark despair? as an angel of pity
have come,
That glory of breeze and distance, with my heavy heart
to home,
As a blessed sign of her presence to lift the pall from the
tomb?
Sombre and melancholy, yet fretted with silver, ’tis
sitting,
One streak of hope, all else with my own black sorrow
fitting,
Upshut, scarce visible, not a stir, not a dream of flitting.
In a soft wonder hushed I stood a trance, a stupor of
awe.
With my whole soul I was seeing, through the pores of
my body I saw,
And felt my frost-bound spirit to her sunny presence
thaw.
Life re-woke, stir, motion. An unforgettable sweetness
Hovered and fluttered within to my pulses’ newborn
fleetness.
Without me the world had winged from a trance of
incompleteness.
For she, the charm and the mystery, the magic of it all,
Earth’s secret soul of delight, she had touched the
yellowing fall
With rustle and movement and shimmer; she had come
back at a call:
Sound and sunshine and beauty at a touch, an admonition
Had burst their chrysalis sleep. At that glory, that
apparition,
Life, the ripple of her, emerged, a newborn vision,
Vivid, immortal, airy, a wondrous vision on wings!
Elate and cumberless, the fire that smouldered in things
Burnt up with her from ashes to be the silence that sings,
The floating flower in the air that dances for ever vernal,
All wings, a bodiless flutter, the symbol of life eternal,
A mingle of breeze and sunshine, glad Psyche, the
winger supernal.
Scarcely alighting ever from flower to shaken flower,
On quivering wings she feeds; or if she rests, for an hour
Will sit in utter repose in the stirlessness of power.
For she is the soul’s own sister: and life but a sweet
emotion,
Like her, a pulsing thought, through the bliss of things,
the ocean,
Hovers, of being and beauty, or quiverless rests from
motion.
You, too, rest, O my dead love, upon wings immortal
alit
Here in the old sweet garden that was our life, to sit
Invisible, folded up; you cannot and will not flit
Till the breeze that is God and morning awake us to
soar together
Through other gardens of unknown time and God’s
eternal weather,
Since life is the soul’s vast voyage and death but a
moment’s tether.
Unalighting, lost in repose, the glorious worlds that
roll-
Each and all I saw in a flash to a winged thing ensoul
Our earth, too, a mothlike creature that hovers on either
pole.
(Manmohan Ghose)
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Based on Topics: Love Poems, Life Poems, World Poems, Light Poems, Mind Poems, Sadness Poems, Death & Dying Poems, Soul Poems, Nature Poems, Dreams Poems, Flowers PoemsBased on Keywords: smouldered, wintering, alit, unforgettable, dusking, frost-bound, aswoon, incompleteness, crisps, himalayan, demurs