MISCELLANEOUS VERSES

 Definitions

What is clear profit? Meeting with good men.

       A malady ? Of incompetent minds the spell.

What is a loss ? Occasion given in vain.

       True skill of life ? With heavenward thoughts to dwell.

A hero ? The heart that is o’er passion lord.

       A mistress ? She to loving service sworn.

Best wealth? Wisdom. True happiness? The sward

       Of one’s own country, life where it was born.

A kingdom ? Swift obedience fruitful found

At the low word from hearts of all around.

A Rarity

Rich in sweet loving words, in harshness poor,

         From blame of others’ lives averse, content

         With one dear wife and so heart-opulent,

Candid and kindly, like an open door,

Some here and there are found on teeming earth;

Her fairest ornament is their quiet worth.

The Flame of the Soul

Insulted, wronged, oppressed the unshaken mind,

      Treasuring its strength, insurgent its high will,

      Towers always, though beat fiercely down to hell.

The torch is to the inglorious soil declined,

      Its flame burns upward and unconquered still.

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The Conqueror

That man whose soul bright beauty cannot pierce

       With love’s sweet burning javelins from her eyes,

Nor sorrow torture his heart, nor passions fierce

        Miserably over his senses tyrannize,

Conquers the world by his high-seated will,

The man well-balanced, noble, wise and still.

The Hero’s Touch

Touched by one hero’s tread how vibrating

Earth starts as if sun-visited, ablaze,

Vast, wonderful, young! Man’s colourless petty days

Bloom suddenly and seem a grandiose thing.

The Power of Goodness

The bloom of natural goodness like a flower

        Is Nature’s darling, all her creatures prize,

And on whose body’s stock its fragrant power

        Blossoms, all fiercest things can humanise.

For him red fire becomes like water pale and cool,

For him heaven-threatening Ocean sinks into a pool

Of quiet azure; for him the lion’s heart

        Tames its dire hungers to be like the hind’s,

And the fell snake unsoothed by music’s art

        Upon his brows in floral wreaths he binds.

Poisons for him to nectar change; impassable hills

Droop, gentle slopes; strong blessings grow from ruthless ills. 

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Truth

Dear as his own sweet mother to the man

Of truth his word is, dear as his heart’s blood.

Truth, ‘tis the mother of his soul’s great brood,

High modesty and virtue’s lordly clan.

Exceeding pure of heart as to a youth

His mother, and like a mother to him cleaves

This sweet proud goddess. Rather life he leaves

And happiness puts away, not divine Truth.

Others clasp some dear vice, gold, woman, wine;

He keeps for Truth his passion fiery and fine.

Woman’s Heart

More hard the heart of woman is to seize

         Than an unreal mirrored face, more hard

          Her moods to follow than on mountains barred

With rocks that skirt a dreadful precipice

A dangerous luring pathway near the skies.

And transient is her frail exacting love

           Like dew that on some lotus’ petal lies.

As with rich fatal shoots an upas-grove,

           Woman with faults is born, with faults she grows.

Thorns are her nature, but her face the rose.

Fame’s Sufficiency

“Victory is his on earth or Paradise,

        The high heart slain in battle face to face.”

Let be your empire and your golden skies;

         For him enough that friends and foemen praise  

 And with fame’s rumour in his ears he dies. 

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Magnanimity

The world teems miracles, breeds grandest things,

           But Rahu of all most marvellous and great

           Or the vast Boar on white tusks delicate

Like buds who bears up earth, else chaos rings.

          Rahu, cleft, trunkless, deathless, passionate,

Leaps on his foemen and can overbear,

A miracle, then, greater miracle, spare.

Man Infinite

Earth is hemmed in with Ocean’s vaster moan;

        The world of waters flows not infinitely;

A high unwearied traveller, the Sun

         Maps out the limits of the vaulted sky.

On every creature born a seal is set

With limits budded in, kept separate.

Only man’s soul looks out with luminous eyes

Upon the worlds inimitably wise.

The Proud Soul’s Choice

But one God to worship, hermit Shiv or puissant Vishnu, high;

But one friend to clasp, the first of men or proud Philosophy;

But one home to live in. Earth’s imperial city or the wild;

But one wife to kiss. Earth’s sweetest face or Nature, God’s own child.

Either in your world the mightiest or my desert solitary. 

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The Waverer

Seven mountains, eight proud elephants, the Snake,

        The Tortoise help to bear this Earth on high,

Yet is she troubled, yet her members shake!

         Symbol of minds impure, perplexed and wry.

Though constant be the strife and claim, the goal

Escapes the sin-driven and the doubting soul.

Gaster Anaides

Nay, is there any in this world who soon

Comes not to heel, his mouth being filled with food?

The inanimate tabour, lo, with flour well-glued

Begins with sweeter voice its song to croon.

The Rarity of the Altruist

Low minds enough there are who only care

       To fill their lusts with pleasure, maws with food.

Where shall we find him, the high soul and rare

        To whom the good of others is his good?

First of the saints is he, first of the wise.

The Red Mare of the Ocean drinks the seas

Her own insatiable fire to feed;

The cloud for greater ends exacts his need,

The parching heats to cool. Earth’s pain to ease.

Wealth’s sole good is to heal the unhappy’s sighs.        

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Statesman and Poet

How like are these whose labour does not cease,

        Statesman and poet, in their several cares;

Anxious their task, no work of splendid ease!

        One ranges far for costly words, prepares

Pure forms and violence popular disdains,

        The voice of rare assemblies strives to find,

Slowly adds phrase to noble phrase and means

        Each line around the human heart to wind’.

The statesman seeks the nation’s wealth from far;

        Not to the easy way of violence prone

He puts from him the brutal clang of war

        And seeks a better kind dominion,

To please the just in their assemblies high,

        Slowly to build his careful steps between

A noble line of linked policy, —

He shapes his acts a nation’s heart to win.

Their burden and their toil make these two kin.

The Words of the Wise

Serve thou the wise and good, covet their speech

         Although to trivial daily things it keeps.

          Their casual thoughts are foam from solemn deeps;

Their passing words make Scripture, Science; rich,

Though seeming poor, their common actions teach.

Noblesse Oblige

If some day by some chance God thought this good

          And lilies were abolished from the earth,

           Would yet the swan like fowls of baser birth

Scatter a stinking dunghill for his food?

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The Roots of Enjoyment

That at thy door proud-necked the high-foaming steeds

            Prance spirited and stamp in pride the ground

            And the huge elephants stand, their temple’s bound

            Broken with rut, like slumbrous mountains round, —

That in harmonious concert fluted reeds,

            The harp’s sweet moan, the tabour and the drum

            And conch-shell in their married moments come

            Waking at dawn in thy imperial dome, —

Thy pride, thy riches, thy full-sated needs,

            That like a king of gods thou dwell’st on earth, —

            From duties high-fulfilled these joys had birth;

            All pleasant things washes to men of worth

The accumulated surge of righteous deeds.

Natural Qualities

Three things are faithful to their place decreed, —

Its splendour as of blood in the lotus red,

Kind actions, of the noble nature part,

And in bad men a cold and cruel heart. 

Death, not Vileness

Better to a dire verge by foemen borne,

            0 man, thy perishable body dashed

            Upon some ragged beach by Ocean lashed,

Hurled on the rocks with bleeding limbs and torn;

Better thy hand on the dire cobra’s tooth

            Sharp-venomed or to anguish in the fire,

            Not at the baser bidding of desire

Thy heart’s high virtue lost and natural truth.

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Man’s Will

Renounce thy vain attempt, presumptuous man,

        Who think’st and labourest long impossibly

That the great heart for misery falter can:

         Fruitless thy hope that cruel fall to see.

Dull soul! these are not petty transient hills,

         Himalay and Mahendra and the rest,

Nor your poor oceans, their fixed course and wills

         That yield by the last cataclysm oppressed.

Man’s will his shattered world can long survive:

         When all has perished, it can dare to live.

The Splendid Harlot

Victory’s a harlot full of glorious lust

Who seeks the hero’s breast with wounds deep-scored,

Hate’s passionate dints like love’s! So when the sword

Has ploughed its field, leap there she feels she must.

Fate

Lo, the moon who gives to healing herbs their virtue, nectar’s home,

Food immortalising, — every wise physician’s radiant Som,¹

Even him consumption seizes in its cruel clinging arms.

Then be ready! Fate takes all her toll and heeds not gifts nor charms,

¹ Soma, the moon-god of the immortalising nectar, the Vedic Soma-Wine. 

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The Transience of Worldly Rewards

Your gleaming palaces of brilliant stone,

        Your bright-limbed girls for grace and passion made,

Your visible glory of dominion,

        Your sceptre and wide canopy displayed,

These things you hold, but with what labour won

        Weaving with arduous toil a transient thread

Of shining deeds on careful virtue spun ?

        Which easily broken, all at once is sped;

As when in lover’s amorous war undone

         A pearl-string, on all sides the bright pearls shed

Collapse and vanish from the unremembering sun. 

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