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Sarojini Naidu
Once in the dream of a night I stood
Lone in the light of a magical wood,
Soul-deep in visions that poppy-like sprang;
And spirits of Truth were the birds that sang,
And spirits of Love were the stars that glowed,
And spirits of Peace were the streams that flowed
In that magical wood in the land of sleep.
Lone in the light of that magical grove,
I felt the stars of the spirits of Love
Gather and gleam round my delicate youth,
And I heard the song of the spirits of Truth;
To quench my longing I bent me low
By the streams of the spirits of Peace that flow
In that magical wood in the land of sleep.
While walking through the trams and cars
I chanced to look up at the sky,
And saw that it was full of stars.
So starry-sown that you could not,
With any care, have stuck a pin
Through any single vacant spot.
And some were shining furiously,
And some were big and some were small.
But all were beautiful to see.
Blue stars and gold, a sky of grey.
The air between a velvet pall ;
I could not take my eyes away.
And there I sang this little psalm
Most awkwardly, because I was
Standing between a car and tram.
All night we danced upon our windy hill,
Your dress a cloud of tangled midnight hair,
And love was much too much for me to wear
My leaves; the killer roared above his kill,
But you danced on, and when some star would spill
Its red and white upon you whirling there,
I sensed a hidden beauty in the air;
Though you danced on, my heart and I stood still.
But suddenly a bit of morning crept
Along your trembling sides of ebony;
I saw the tears your tired limbs had wept,
And how your breasts heaved high, how languidly
Your dark arms moved; I drew you close to me;
We flung ourselves upon our hill and slept.
VI
We lack, yet cannot fix upon the lack:
Not this, nor that; yet somewhat, certainly.
We see the things we do not yearn to see
Around us: and what see we glancing back?
Lost hopes that leave our hearts upon the rack,
Hopes that were never ours yet seem’d to be,
For which we steer’d on life’s salt stormy sea
Braving the sunstroke and the frozen pack.
If thus to look behind is all in vain,
And all in vain to look to left or right,
Why face we not our future once again,
Launching with hardier hearts across the main,
Straining dim eyes to catch the invisible sight,
And strong to bear ourselves in patient pain?
IX
In Warsaw in Poland
Half the world away,
The one I love best of all
Thought of me to-day;
I know, for I went
Winged as a bird,
In the wide flowing wind
His own voice I heard;
His arms were round me
In a ferny place,
I looked in the pool
And there was his face--
But now it is night
And the cold stars say:
"Warsaw in Poland
Is half the world away."
The stars are like gold-fish in a deep blue bowl,
Swimming round and round the centuries.
Sometimes one dies of the hot summer night;
I watch it falling —
Fading —
And I watch the others,
Floating in their blue bowl,
Eternally golden,
Immortally indifferent.
How still the night !
The air, a fragrance fallen
from unseen wings ;
The pine-trunks, stones of some dark
and secret temple ;
Venus, a lantern burning without flame.
But my soul is not still.
The wind blows bitterly ;
The pines groan on their rock-nourished
roots ;
The stars are blotted out.
I love you in the way that
people still stargaze
on cloudy nights
Where my love waits
A hand has painted stars upon the vault
Which never change,
The trees have turned resplendent gold
But no leaves fall,
The moon hangs full in copper hues
And never wanes,
The night bears warming breezes
But no dawn.
There must be winter, and a sleep
Before we meet,
Till love permits the world to breathe again.
Under stars
diamond hard,
I cross this log bridge
where we fed birds
by the lake,
skating my boots
like a young girl,
hoping to find you,
this time, cabined,
building fire
on the open hearth.
Sleep, my love, your way of dream
By the fireflies shall be lighted,
That I gather from the heart of night.
Your father is off, good night,
To buy the honey from the stars :
The city of stars is away a hundred miles.
But by the dawn he will return,
Riding on the horses of the dews,
For you, with a drum as big as the sun
Are the fallen stars
Returning up the sky?-
The dews on the grass.