Sandhya Songs of Twilight

Excerpt

SYMBOLISM

Tongueless the bell!
Lute without a song!
It is not night
It is God's dawn,
Silence its unending song.
Over heart's valley,
In the soul's night,
Through pain's window
Behold! His light!
On Life's Height.
No prayer, now,
Though death-waves roll,
Faith's candle lit,
Beside it sits the soul
Reading Eternity's scroll.

SOURCE OF SINGING

A bruised heart,
A wounded soul,
A broken lute,
That is all!
A sad evening,
And a lone star,
Then song reddens—
Sets life's forest afire!

With purple shadows the mist measures the infinite sea
That spreads her wave-raiment in lavender, violet, gray, and green;
While with thin silver rays a lone star seeks to sound the deeps.
The breeze-wings tire of flight;
The mist-threads weave a rose-fringed dusky drapery
To cover the bare breasts of the dunes from the moon's langour-heavy eyes.
The shadows die in purple silence;
Fades the one star from the sky,
As the dark mist puts out the rose-red moon from its deep.
Pale gleams the lighthouse light;
No warring waves break the peace of sleep tonight
Nor a hungry wind shrieks in pain from the lea.
Under her heavy veil of black
A languid sea sluggishly flows
To some far land of forsaken dreams.

4

Who are you?
Why make me wait
From the hour of dew
Till another sunset?
Why do I look
For your coming?
Listen to the weeping brook
That might bring
To my lonely shore
A word from you.
Ah, nothing! not a leaf's tremor!
O, old! O, longed for new!
Who are you? I ask;
Know not why I seek
From day to dusk
Without waking or sleep,—
No sleep! no waking!
A dreaming, a longing;
Not knowing, yet seeking,
For your coming waiting—
O, spring-born!
O, autumn-clad!
O, soul's new morn!
O, old! O, glad!
So glad, so young!
O, unseen, unknown,
O, fugitive vision!
O, eternal moan
In my heart—
O, tearful Soul of laughter,
Untouched, unhurt,
O, sweet! O, bitter!
My born yet unborn,
Shadow not fallen
O, undawning morn—
O, message unbroken.
Why, how, when?
I wait, wait for you,
O embrace of earth and heaven;
O, Old! O, New!

"O, Old! O, New!" is the cry of a "Poáti," e. g., a mother's cry to her unborn child. "Poáti" has no precise English synonym.

5

The far away called her—
A pilgrim on the hope-lit bark of youth,
A woman, a child, a soul
On an argosy for the lands of south.
It called her in her dreams;
Her waking into a deeper dream grew;
The flute of the distant
Played ceaselessly the music of the new.
With words of fire it called her,
Beyond the bourne of her days
To a silent sea of joy
Washed by unending twilight-rays.
It called her at dawn
When night shed the star-jewels from her hair;
It called her at sunset
When the moon mutely ascended the heaven's stair.
It called her without ceasing—
Hour after hour but a calling,
Till "Come, come, come!"
At her soul's door kept repeating:
Come, come, come!—in
Her word, her music, her song;
Far away, near, far again
Heedless of nightfall and dawn....