In woodlands of the bright and early world,

When love was to himself yet new and warm

And stainless, played like morning with a flower

Ruru with his young bride Priyumvada.

Fresh-cheeked and dew-eyed white Priyumvada .
Opened her budded heart of crimson bloom
To love, to Ruru; Ruru, a happy flood
Of passion round a lotus dancing thrilled,
Blinded with his soul's waves Priyumvada.
To him the earth was a bed for this sole flower,
To her all the world was filled with his embrace.

Wet with new rains the morning earth, released

From her fierce centuries and burning suns,
Lavished her breath in greenness; poignant flowers

Thronged all her eager breast, and her young arms

Cradled a childlike bounding life that played
And would not cease, nor ever weary grew

Of her bright promise; for all was joy and breeze

And perfume, colour and bloom and ardent rays

Of living, and delight desired the world.
Then Earth was quick and pregnant tamelessly;
A free and unwalled race possessed her plains
Whose hearts uncramped by bonds, whose unspoiled thoughts
At once replied to light. Foisoned the fields;
Lonely and rich the forests and the swaying
Of those unnumbered tops affected men
With thoughts to their vast music kin. Undammed

The virgin rivers moved towards the sea,
And mountains yet unseen and peoples vague

Winged young imagination like an eagle
To strange beauty remote. And Ruru felt
The sweetness of the early earth as sap
All through him, and short life an aeon made
By boundless possibility, and love,
Sweetest of all unfathomable love,
A glory untired. As a bright bird comes flying

From airy extravagance to his own home,
And breasts his mate, and feels her all his goal,

Page-231

So from boon sunlight and the fresh chill wave

Which swirled and lapped between the slumbering fields,

From forest pools and wanderings mid leaves

Through emerald ever-new discoveries,
Mysterious hillsides ranged and buoyant-swift
Races with our wild brothers in the meads,
Came Ruru back to the white-bosomed girl,
Strong-winged to pleasure. She all fresh and new
Rose to him, and he plunged into her charm.

For neither to her honey and poignancy

Artlessly interchanged, nor any limit
To the sweet physical delight of her
He found. Her eyes like deep and infinite wells

Lured his attracted soul, and her touch thrilled

Not lightly, though so light; the joy prolonged

And sweetness of the lingering of her lips
Was every time a nectar of surprise

To her lover; her smooth-gleaming shoulder bared

In darkness of her hair showed jasmine-bright,

While her kissed bosom by rich tumults stirred

Was a moved sea that rocked beneath his heart,

Then when her lips had made him blind, soft siege

Of all her unseen body to his rule
Betrayed the ravishing realm of her white limbs,

An empire for the glory of a God.
He knew not whether he loved most her smile,

Her causeless tears or little angers swift,

Whether held wet against him from the bath

Among her kindred lotuses, her cheeks
Soft to his lips and dangerous happy breasts

That vanquished all his strength with their desire,

Meeting his absence with her sudden face,
Or when the leaf-hid bird at night complained

Near their wreathed arbour on the moonlit lake,

Sobbing delight ,out from her heart of bliss,
Or in his clasp of rapture laughing low
Of his close bosom bridal-glad and pleased
With passion and this fiery play of love,
Or breaking off like one who thinks of grief,

Wonderful melancholy in her eyes

Page-232

Grown liquid and with wayward sorrow large.

Thus he in her found a warm world of sweets,

And lived of ecstasy secure, nor deemed
Any new hour could match. that early bliss.
But Iove has joys for spirits born divine
More bleeding-lovely than his thornless rose.
That day he had left, while yet the east was dark,

Rising, her bosom and into the river
Swan out, exulting in the sting and swift .
Sharp-edged desire around his limbs, and sprang

Wet to the bank, and streamed into the wood.

As a young horse upon the pastures glad
Feels greensward and the wind along his mane
And arches as he goes his neck, so went
In an immense delight of youth the boy
And shook his locks, joy-crested. Boundlessly
He revelled in swift air of life, a creature
Of wide and vigorous morning. Far he strayed
Tempting for flower and fruit branches in heaven,
And plucked, and flung away, and brighter chose,
Seeking comparisons for her bloom; and followed
New streams, and touched new trees, and felt slow beauty
And leafy secret change; for the damp leaves,
Grey-green at first, grew pallid with the light
And warmed with consciousness of sunshine near;
Then the whole daylight wandered in, and made

Hard tracts of splendour, and enriched all hues.

But when a happy sheltered heat he felt

And heard contented voice of living things
Harmonious with the noon, he turned and swiftly
Went homeward yearning to Priyumvada,
And near his home emerging from green leaves.
He laughed towards the sun: "O father Sun,”

He cried, "how good it is to live, to love.

Surely our joy shall never end, nor we
Grow old, but like bright rivers or pure winds
Sweetly continue, or revive with flowers,

"Or live at least as long as senseless trees."

He dreamed, and said with a soft smile: "Lo, she!
And she will turn from me with angry tears

 Page-233

Her delicate face more beautiful than storm
Or rainy moonlight. I will follow her,
And soothe her heart with sovereign flatteries;
Or rather all tyranny exhaust and taste
The beauty of her anger like a fruit,
Vexing her soul with helplessness; then soften
Easily with quiet undenied demand
Of heart insisting upon heart; or else
Will reinvest her beauty bright with flowers,
Or with my hands her little feet persuade.
Then will her face be like a sudden dawn,
And flower compelled into reluctant smiles."
He had not ceased when he beheld her. She,
Tearing a jasmine bloom with waiting hands,
Stood drooping, petulant, but heard at once
His footsteps and before she was aware,
A sudden smile of exquisite delight
Leaped to her mouth, and a great blush of joy

Surprised her cheeks. She for a moment stood

Beautiful with her love before she died;
And he laughed towards her. With a pitiful cry
She paled; moaning, her stricken limbs collapsed.
But petrified, in awful dumb surprise,
He gazed; then waking with a bound was by her,
All panic expectation. As he came,
He saw a brilliant flash of coils evade
The sunlight, and with hateful gorgeous hood
Darted into green safety, hissing, death.
Voiceless he sank beside her and stretched out
His arms and desperately touched her face,
As if to attract her soul to live, and sought

Beseeching with his hands her bosom. O, she
Was warm, and cruel hope pierced him; but pale
As jasmines fading on a girl's sweet breast
Her cheek was, and forgot its perfect rose.
Her eyes that clung to sunlight yet, with pain
Were large and feebly round his neck her arms
She lifted and, desiring his pale cheek
Against her bosom, sobbed out piteously,
"Ah, Love!" and stopped heart-broken; then, "O Love!  

Page-234

Alas the green dear home that I must leave
So early! I was so glad of love and kisses,
And thought that centuries would not exhaust
The deep embrace. And I have had so little

Of joy and the wild day and throbbing night,

Laughter, and tenderness, and strife and tears.

I have not numbered half the brilliant birds

In one green forest, nor am familiar grown

With sunrise and the progress of the eves,
Nor have with plaintive cries of birds made friends,

Cuckoo and rainlark and love-speak-to-me.
I have not learned the names of half the flowers

Around me; so few trees know me by my name;

Nor have I seen the stars so very often
That I should die. I feel a dreadful hand
Drawing me from the touch of thy warm limbs
Into some cold vague mist, and all black night
Descends towards me. I no more am thine,
But go I know not where, and see pale shapes

And gloomy countries and that terrible stream.

O love, O Love, they take me from thee far,
And whether we shall find each other ever

In the wide dreadful territory of death,

I know not. Or thou wilt forget me quite,

And life compel thee into other arms.
Ah, come with me! I cannot bear to wander
In that cold cruel country all alone,
Helpless and terrified, or sob by streams

Denied sweet sunlight and by thee unloved."

Slower her voice came now, and over her cheek

Death paused; then; sobbing like a little child

Too early from her bounding pleasures called,

The lovely discontented spirit stole
From her warm body white. Over her leaned

Ruru, and waited for dead lips to move.

Still in the greenwood lay Priyumvada,

And Ruru rose not from her, but with eyes
Emptied of glory hung above his dead,
Only, without a word, without a tear.
Then the crowned wives of the great forest came,

 Page-235

They who had fed her from maternal breasts,

And grieved over the lovely body cold,
And bore it from him; nor did he entreat

One last look nor one kiss, nor yet denied

What he had loved so well. They the dead girl

Into some distant greenness bore away.

But Ruru, while the stillness of the place
Remembered her, sat without voice. He heard
Through the great silence that was now his soul,
The forest sounds, a squirrel's leap through leaves,

The cheeping of a bird just overhead,
A peacock with his melancholy cry
Complaining far away, and tossings dim
And slight unnoticeable stir of trees.
But all these were to him like distant things
And he alone in his heart's void. And yet
No thought he had of her so lately lost,
Rather far pictures, trivial incidents
Of that old life before her delicate face
Had lived for him, dumbly distinct like thoughts

Of men that die, kept with long pomps his mind

Excluding the dead girl. So still he was,
The birds flashed by him with their swift small wings,

Fanning him. Then he moved, then rigorous

Memory through all his body shuddering
Awoke, and he looked up and knew the place,
And recognised greenness immutable,
And saw old trees and the same flowers still bloom.

He felt the bright indifference of earth
And all the lonely uselessness of pain.
Then lifting up the beauty of his brow
He spoke, with sorrow pale: "O grim cold Death!

But I will not like ordinary men
Satiate thee with cries, and falsely woo thee,
Arid make my grief thy theatre, who lie
Prostrate beneath thy thunderbolts and make
Night witness of their moans, shuddering and crying

When sudden memories pierce them like swords,

And often starting up as at a thought

 Page-236

 Intolerable, pace a little, then
Sink down exhausted by brief agony.
O secrecy terrific, darkness vast,
At which we shudder! Somewhere, I know not where,

Somehow, I know not how, I shall confront
Thy gloom, tremendous spirit, and seize with hands

And prove what thou art and what man." He said,

And slowly to the forests wandered. There
Long months he travelled between grief and grief,

Reliving thoughts of her with every pace,
Measuring vast pain in his immortal mind.
And his heart cried in him as when a fire
Roars through wide forests and the branches cry

Burning towards heaven in torture glorious.
So burned, immense, his grief within him; he raised

His young pure face all solemnised with pain,
Voiceless. Then Fate was shaken, and the Gods
Grieved for him, of his silence grown afraid.
Therefore from peaks divine came flashing down

Immortal Agni and to the Uswuttha-tree,

Cried in the Voice that slays the world: "O tree

That liftest thy enormous branches able

To shelter armies, more than armies now

Shelter, be famous, house a brilliant God.
For the grief grows in Ruru's breast up-piled,
As wrestles with its anguished barricades

In silence an impending flood, and Gods
Immortal grow afraid. For earth alarmed

Shudders to bear the curse lest her young life
Pale with eclipse and all-creating love
Be to mere pain condemned. Divert the wrath
Into thy boughs, Uswuttha - thou shalt be
My throne - glorious, though in eternal pangs,

Yet worth muth pain to harbour divine fire."
So ended the young pure destroyer's voice,
And the dumb god consented silently.
In the same noon came Ruru; his mind had paused,

Lured for a moment by soft wandering, gleams
Into forgetfulness of grief; for thoughts
Gentle and near-eyed whispering memories  

Page-237

So sweetly came, his blind heart dreamed she lived.

Slow the Uswuttha-tree bent down its leaves,

And smote his cheek, and touched his heavy hair.

And Ruru turned illumined. For a moment,
One blissful moment he had felt 'twas she.
So had she often stolen up and touched
His curls with her enamoured fingers small,

Lingering, while the wind smote him with her hair

And her quick breath came to him like spring. Then he,

Turning, as one surprised with heaven, saw
Ready to his swift passionate grasp her bosom
And body sweet expecting his embrace.
Oh, now saw her not, but the guilty tree
Shrinking; then grief back with a double crown

Arose and stained his face with agony.
Nor silence he endured, but the dumb force
Ascetic and inherited, by sires
Fierce-musing earned, from the boy's bosom blazed.

"O Uswuttha-tree, wantonly who hast mocked
My anguish with the wind, but thou no more
Have joy of the cool wind nor green delight,
But live thy guilty leaves in fire, so long
As Aryan wheels by thy doomed shadow vast

Thunder to war, nor bless with cool wide waves

Lyric Saruswathi nations impure."
He spoke, and the vast tree groaned through its leaves,

Recognising its fate; then smouldered; lines
Of living fire rushed up the girth and hissed

Serpentine in the unconsuming leaves;
Last, all Hutashan in his chariot armed
Sprang on the boughs and blazed into the sky,
And wailing all the great tormented creature
Stood wide in agony; one half was green
And earthly, the other a weird brilliance
Filled with the speed and cry of endless flame.
But he, with the fierce rushing-out of power
Shaken and that strong grasp of anguish, flung
His hands out to the sun; “Priyumvada!"
He cried, and at that well-loved sound there dawned

With overwhelming sweetness miserable

 Page-238

Upon his mind the old delightful times

When he had called her by her liquid name,
Where the voice loved to linger. He remembered

The chompuc bushes where she turned away

Half-angered, and his speaking of her name

Masterfully as to a lovely slave
Rebellious who has erred; at that the slow
Yielding of her small head, and after a little

Her sliding towards him and beautiful

Propitiating body as she sank down
With timid graspings deprecatingly
In prostrate warm surrender, her flushed cheeks  

Upon his feet and little touches soft;
Or her long name uttered beseechingly,
And the swift leap of all her body to him,
And eyes of large repentance, and the weight

Of her wild bosom and lips unsatisfied;
Of hourly call for little trivial needs,
Of sweet unneeded wanton summoning,
Daily appeal that never staled nor lost
Its sudden music, and her lovely speed,

Sedulous occupation left, quick-breathing,

With great glad eyes and eager parted lips;

Or in deep quiet moments murmuring

That name like a religion in her ear,
And her calm look compelled to ecstasy;
Or to the river luring her, or breathed
Over her dainty slumber, or secret sweet

Bridal outpantings of her broken name.

All these as rush unintermitting waves
Upon a swimmer overborne, broke on him

ReIentless, things too happy to be endured,

Till faint with the recalled felicity  

Low he moaned out: "O pale Priyumvada!
O dead fair flower! yet living to my grief!
But I could only slay the innocent tree,
Powerless when power should have been. Not such

Was Bhrigu from whose sacred strength I spring,

Nor Bhrtgu's son, my father, when he blazed
Out from Puloma's side, and burning, blind,

 Page-239

Fell like a tree, the ravisher unjust.
But I degenerate from such sires. O Death

That showest not thy face beneath the stars,

But comest masked, and on our dear ones seizing

Fearest to wrestle equally with love!
Nor from thy gloomy house any come back
To tell thy way. But O, if any strength
In lover's constancy to torture dwell
Earthward to force a helping god and such

Ascetic force be born of lover's pain,
Let my dumb pangs be heard. Whoe'er thou art,

O thou bright enemy of Death descend
And lead me to that portal dim. For I
Have burned in fires cruel as the fire
And lain upon a sharper couch than swords."

He ceased, and heaven thrilled, and the far blue

Quivered as with invisible downward wings.

But Ruru passioned on, and came with eve
To secret grass and a green opening moist
In a cool lustre. Leaned upon a tree
That bathed in faery air and saw the sky
Through bra:nches and a single parrot loud

Screamed from its top, there stood a golden boy,

Half-naked, with bright limbs all beautiful-

Delicate they were, in sweetness absolute:
For every gleam and every soft strong curve

Magically compelled the eye, and smote
The heart to weakness. In his hands he swung
A bow - not such as human archers use:
For the string moved and murmured like many bees,

And nameless fragrance made the casual air
A peril. He on Ruru that fair face
Turned, and his steps with lovely gesture chained.

"Who art thou here, in forests wandering,
And thy young exquisite face is solemnised
With pain? Luxuriously the Gods have tortured

Thy heart to see such dreadful glorious beauty

Agonize in thy lips and brilliant eyes:
As tyrants in the fierceness of others' pangs

 Page-240

Joy and feel strong, clothing with brilliant fire,
Tyrants in Tittn lands. Needs must her mouth
Have been pure honey and her bosom a charm,
Whom thou desirest seeing not the green
And common lovely sounds hast quite forgot."
And Ruru, mastered by the God, replied:
“I know thee by thy cruel beauty bright,
Kama, who makest many worlds one fire.
Ah, wherefore wilt thou ask of her to increase
The passion and regret? Thou knowest, great love!

Thy nymph her mother, if thou truly art he
And not a dream of my disastrous soul."
But with the thrilled eternal smile that makes
The spring, the lover of Rathi golden-limbed
Replied to .Ruru, "Mortal, I am he;
I am that Madan who inform the stars
With lustre and on life's wide canvas fill
Pictures of light and shade, of joy and tears,
Make ordinary moments wonderful
And common speech a charm: knit life to life

With interfusions of opposing souls
And sudden meetings and slow sorceries:
Wing the boy bridegroom to that panting breast,

Smite Gods with mortal faces, dreadfully

Among great beautiful kings and watched by eyes

That burn, force on the virgin's fainting limbs
And drive her to the one face never seen,
The one breast meant eternally for her.
By me come wedded sweets, by me the wife's

Busy delight and passionate obedience,
And loving eager service never sated,
And happy lips, and worshipping soft eyes:

And mine the husband's hungry arms and use
Unwearying of old tender words and ways.
Joy of her hair, and silent pleasur felt
Of nearness to one dear familiar shape. I
Nor only these, but many affections bright

And soft glad things cluster around my name.

I plant fraternal tender yearnings, make
The sister's sweet attractiveness and leap

Page-241

Of heart towards imperious kindred blood,

And the young mother's passionate deep look,

Earth's high similitude of One not earth,
Teach filial heart-beats strong. These are my gifts

For which men praise me, these my glories calm:

But fiercer shafts I can, wild storms blown down

Shaking fixed minds and melting marble natures,

Tears and dumb bitterness and pain unpitied,
Racked thirsting jealousy and kind hearts made stone:

And in undisciplined huge souls I sow
Dire vengeance and impossible cruelties,
Cold lusts that linger and fierce fickleness,
The loves close kin to hate, brute violence
And mad insatiable longings pale,
And passion blind as death and deaf as swords.
O mortal, all deep-souled desires and all
Yearnings immense are mine, so much I can."
So as he spoke, his face grew wonderful
With vast suggestion, his human-seeming limbs

Brightened with a soft splendour: luminous hints

Of the concealed divinity transpired.
But soon with a slight discontented frown:
"So much I can, as even the great Gods learn.

Only with death I wrestle in vain, until
My passionate godhead all becomes a doubt.

Mortal, I am the light in stars, of flowers
The bloom, the nameless fragrance that pervades

Creation: but behind me, older than me,
He comes with night and cold tremendous shade.

Hard is the way to him, most hard to find,
Harder to tread, for perishable feet
Almost impossible. Yet, O fair youth,
If thou must needs go down, and thou art strong

In passion and in constancy, nor easy
The soul to slay that has survived such grief -

Steel then thyself to venture, armed by Love.
Yet listen first what heavy trade they drive
Who would win back their dead to human arms."

So much the God; but swift, with eager eyes
And panting bosom and glorious flushed face,

 Page-242

The lover: "O great Love! O beautiful Love!

But if by strength is possible, of body

Or mind, battle of spirit of moving speech,

Sweet speech that makes even cruelty grow kind,

Or yearning melody - for I have heard
That when Saruswathi in heaven her harp
Has smitten, the cruel sweetness terrible
Coils taking no denial through the soul,
And tears burst from the hearts of Gods - then I,
Making great music, or with perfect words,
Will strive, or staying him with desperate hands
Match human strength 'gainst formidable Death.
But if with price, ah God! what easier! Tears
Dreadful, innumerable I will absolve,
Or pay with anguish through the centuries,
Soul's agony and torture physical,

So her small hands about my face at last 

I feel, close real hair sting me with life,

And palpable breathing bosom on me press."

Then with a lenient smile the mighty God:
”O ignorant fond lover, not with tears

Shalt thou persuade immitigable Death.
He will not pity all thy pangs: nor know
His stony eyes with music to grow kind,
Nor lovely words accepts. And how wilt thou

Wrest1e with that grim shadow, who canst not save 

One bloom from fading? A sole thing the Gods

Demand from all men living, sacrifice:
Nor without this shall any crown be grasped.
Yet many sacrifices are there, oxen,
And prayers, and Soma wine, and pious flowers,
Blood and the fierce expense of mind, and pure

Incense of perfect actions, perfect thoughts,
Or liberality wide as the sun's,
Or ruthless labour or disastrous tears,
Exile or death or pain more hard than death,
Absence, a desert, from the faces loved;

Even sin may be a sumptuous sacrifice 

Acceptable for unholy fruits. But none

Of these the inexorable shadow asks:

 Page-243

Alone of gods Death loves not gifts: he visits
The pure heart as the stained. Lo, the just man

Bowed helpless over his dead, nor all his virtues
Shall quicken that cold bosom: near him the wild

Marred face and passionate and will not leave

Kissing dead lips that shall not chide him more.

Life the pale ghost requires: with half thy life

Thou mayst protract the thread too early cut
Of that delightful spirit,- half sweet life.

O Ruru, lo, thy frail precarious days,
And yet how sweet they are! simply to breathe

How warm and sweet! And ordinary things
How exquisite, thou then shalt learn when lost,

How luminous the daylight was, mere sleep
How soft and friendly clasping tired limbs,
And the deliciousness of common food.
And things indifferent thou then shalt want,

Regret rejected beauty, brightnesses
Bestowed in vain. Wilt thou yield up, O lover,

Half thy sweet portion of this light and gladness,

Thy little insufficient share, and vainly
Give to another? She is not thyself:
Thou dost not feel the gladness in her bosom,

Nor with the torture of thy body will she
Throb and cry out: at most with tender looks

And pitiful attempt to feel move near thee,
And weep how far she is from what she loves.

Men live like stars 'that see each other in heaven,

But one knows not the pleasure and the grief

The others feel: he lonely rapture has,
Or bears his incommunicable pain.
O Ruru, there are many beautiful faces,
But one thyself. Think then how thou shalt mourn

When thou hast shortened joy aifd feelst at last

The shadow that thou hadst for such sweet store."

He ceased with a strange d6ubtfullobk. But swift

Came back the lover's voice, like passionate rain.

"O idle words! For what is mere sunlight?
Who would live on into extreme old age,
Burden the impatient world, a weary old man,

 Page-244

And look back on a selfish time ill-spent

Exacting out of prodigal great life
Small separate pleasures like an usurer,

And no rich sacrifice and no large act
Finding oneself in others, nor the sweet
Expense of Nature in her passionate gusts
Of love and giving, first of the soul's needs?
Who is so coldly wise, and does not feel
How wasted were our grandiose human days
In prudent personal unshared delights?
Why dost thou mock me, friend of all the stars?

How canst thou be love's god and know not this,
That love burns down the body's barriers cold

And laughs at difference - playing 'with it merely

To make joy sweeter? O too deeply I know,
The lover is not different from the loved,
Nor is their silence dumb to each other. He

Contains her heart and feels her body in his,
He flushes with her heat, chills with her cold.
And when she dies, oh! when she dies, oh me,

The emptiness, the maim! the life no life,
The sweet and passionate oneness lost! And if

By shortening of great grief won back, O price

Easy! O glad briefness, aeons may envy!
For we shall live not fearing death, nor feel
As others yearning over the loved at night
When the lamp flickers, sudden chills of dread

Terrible; nor at short absence agonise,
Wrestling with mad imagination. Us
Serenely when the darkening shadow comes,
One common sob shall end and soul clasp soul,

Leaving the body in a long dim kiss. .
Then in the joys of heaven we shall consort,

Amid the gladness often touching hands
To make bliss sure; or in the ghastly stream
If we must anguish, yet it shall not part
Our passionate limbs inextricably locked
By one strong agony, but we shall feel
Hell's pain half joy through sweet companionship.

God Love, I weary of words. O wing me rather

 Page-245