Chapter V

And tho thy loftier Brother shall be King, High-priest be thou to Brahma unrevealed, While thy white sanctity forever sealed In icy silence leaves desire congealed. In ghostly ministrations to the sun, And to the mendicant stars and the moon-nun, Be holy still, till East to West has run, And till no sacrificial suffering On any shrine is left to tell life's sting.

THE BARREN WOMAN

(_Benares_)

At the burning-ghat, O Kali,
Mother divine and dread,
See, I am waiting with open lips
Over the newly dead.
I am childless and barren; pity
And let me catch the soul
Of him who here on the kindled bier
Pays to Existence toll.

See, by his guileless body
I cook the bread and eat.
Give me the soul he does not need
Now, for conception sweet.
Hear, or my lord and husband
Shall send me from his door
And take to his side a fairer bride
Whose breast shall be less poor.

Oft I have sought thy temples,
By Ganges now I seek,
Where ashes of all the dead are strewn,
And is my prayer not meek?
The ghats and the shrines and the people
That bathe in the holy Stream
Have heard my cry, O goddess high,
Shall I not have my dream?

The women of Oudh and Jaipur
Look on my face with scorn.
Children about their garments cling,
To me shall none be born?
The death-fires quiver faster,
O hasten, goddess, a sign,
That from this doom into my womb
Thy pledge has passed, divine.

Woe! there is naught but ashes,
Now, and the weepers go.
Lone on the ghat they leave me, lone,
With but the River's flow.
Kali, I ask not jewels
Nor justice, beauty nor shrift,
But for the lowest woman's right,
A child--tho I die of the gift!

BY THE TAJ MAHAL

Under the Indian stars, Mumtaz Mahal, I am sitting, Watching them wind their silent way Over your wistful Tomb; Watching the crescent prow Of the moon among them flitting, Fair as the shallop that bore your soul To Paradise's Room.

Under the Indian stars, With palm and peepul about me, With dome and kiosk and minaret Mounting against the sky, I seem to see your face In all the fairness without me; In all the sadness that fills my heart To hear your lover's cry.

Under the Indian stars I look for your Jasmine Tower, Along the River whose barren bed Lies gray beneath the moon. And thro its magic doors You seem like a spirit flower, Wandering back from Allah's bourne To seek for some lost boon.

Under the Indian stars I see you softly moving, Among your jewel-lit maidens there, A sweet and ghostly queen, And the scent of attar flung In your marble font seems proving That passion never can die from love, If truly love has been.

Under the Indian stars _He_ comes, "the Shadow of Allah," Jehan, the lord of Magnificence, The liege who holds your heart. The silver doors swing back And alone with him you hallow The amorous night--whose moon has made Such visions in me start.

Under the Indian stars-- But the end of all is moaning! I hear his dying breath that from Your Tomb shall never die. For every jasper flower He set in its dream seems loaning To Beauty a grief, Mumtaz Mahal, And unto Fate a sigh.

LOVE'S CYNIC

I

O you poets, ever pretending
Love is immortal, pipe the truth!
Empty your books of lies, the ending
Of no passion can be--Youth.
"Heaven," you breathe, "will join the broken?"
Come, was the Infinite e'er wed,
That He must evermore be thinking
Of your wedding bed?

II

Pipe the truth! tho it clip the glamour
Out of your rhymes and rip your dream.
Do you believe words can enamour
Death and dry up Lethe's stream?
Death? it is but a Sponge that passes,
One the Appeaseless e'er will squeeze
Back into Lethe's flood--whose lasting
Is eternities.

III

"False!" cry you, "and an unbeseeming
Blasphemy!"--Well, look around.
Is it not only in blaspheming
Truth is ever to be found?
Whether it be, one thing I ask you,
Lovers and poets, tell, I pray,
Was there ever a love-oath ended
Ere the Judgment Day?

IV

"O," you answer, "ill is in all things."
But in an ancient lie what's good?
Is it not better just to call things
What they are--not what we would?
When you are clinging to your mistress,
Love has the face of Eternity.
Cling to her then, but know that Wanting
Fools the best that be.

V

"Yet her brows and her eyes that murmur
All the music," you say, "of God!"
Press her lips but a little firmer--
You will feel that they are--sod.
"But there is living soul beyond them,
And it is love's till all things end?"
Children alone build Paradises
With but pence to spend.

VI

"Ai-ho now! that is like the cynic,"
Pitying runs your poet-smile,
"He has sat at the Devil's clinic
With some dead love up the while."
Dead or alive are one with passions,
Under the potent knife of Truth
They will be seen composed of craving--
And a little ruth.

VII

"Then the world on a lie is living?"
Many a lie has filled its maw!
"Better illusion tho than giving
Faith to a fatal loveless Law?"
There is a certain Socratean
Saying that swine of their ditch are sure;
Yet do they prove by their contentment
That it will endure?

VIII

Clasp her close! But the truth is in you,
Tho you have rhymed and rammed it down,
Hid it with honey-words that win you
Wreaths that you know bedeck the clown.
Kings they will call you and uplifters
Of your kind? Lord save the mark,
That we are still for fire dependent
On so false a spark.