ON BASANTI’S BIRTHDAY - JYESTHA 1900

Of Spring is her name for whose bud and blooming

         We praise today the Giver, -

Of Spring, and its sweetness clings about her

For her face is Spring and Spring’s without her,

         As 1oth to leave her.

See, it is summer; the brilliant sunlight

         Lies hard on stream and plain,

And all things wither with heats diurnal;

But she! how vanished things and vernal

         In her remain.

And almost indeed we repine and marvel

         To watch her bloom and grow;

For half we had thought our sweet bud could never

Bloom out, but must surely remain for ever

         The child we know.

But now though summer must come and autumn

         In God’s high governing

Yet I deem that her soul with soft insistence

Shall guard through all change the sweet existence

         And charm of Spring.

O dear child soul, our loved and cherished,

         For this thy days had birth,

Like some tender flower on some grey stone portal

To sweeten and flush with childhood immortal

         The ageing earth.

There are flowers in God’s garden of prouder blooming

         Brilliant and bold and bright,

The tulip and rose are fierier and brighter,

But this has a softer hue, a whiter

         And milder light.

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Long be thy days in rain and sunshine,

         Often thy spring relume,

Gladdening thy mother’s heart with thy beauty,

Flowerlike doing thy gentle duty

         To be loved and bloom.                      

Since I have seen your face

Since I have seen your face at the window, sweet

Love, you have thrown a spell on my heart, my feet.

My heart to your face, my feet to your window still

Bear me by force as if by an alien will.

O witch of beauty, O Circe with innocent eyes,
You have suddenly caught me fast in a net of sighs.
I look at the sunlight, I see your laughing face;
When I purchase a flower, it is you in your radiant grace.

I have tried to save my soul alive from your snare,

I will strive no more; let it flutter and perish there.

I too will snare your body alive, O my dove,
And teach you all the torture and sweetness of love.

When you have looked from the window out on the trampling city,

Did you think to take my heart and pay me with pity?
But you looked at one who has ever mocked at sin
And gambled with life to lose her all or win.

I will pluck you forth like a fluttering bird from her nest.

You shall lie on Love’s strong knees, in his white warm breast,

Afraid, with delighted lids that will not close.
You shall grow white one moment, the next a rose.

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