The Moon

On silver skates the moon is gliding

Over heavens of icy blue,

And swimming clouds with their snow-dust are hiding

Her lovely face of milk-foam hue.

How her rich gossamer hair is flowing

And the ether-winds with joy are athrill;

The stars are frozen light-drops glowing

In her tresses like sparkling points in a rill.

Alluring the smile upon her face;

Her heart is a fountain of delight,

All gloom dissolves in her light's embrace,

Love's eyes of dream grow awake and bright.

10-11-1930

Be Gone

Be gone alluring pleasant things

That feed upon the soul;

Leave it to spread its burning wings

And soar towards the goal.

28-9-1933

Do not Smile so Sweet

Do not smile so sweet, O Mother!

Do not smile so sweet;

Our little hearts will burst with joy

And lie around Thy feet.

 

Swarganga-like Thy smile is flowing,

Its dancing waves caress us all;

It sanctifies and sets us glowing

Like the stars in heaven's own hall.

 

If once we see Thy beaming face,

The charm of million moons

No longer holds us in embrace,

To nothingness it swoons.

 

The tenderness of all the flowers

That bloom above or here,

From Thee is raining down in showers

A heaven-life sweet and dear.

 

No, Mother! do not smile so sweet,

It charms too much our consciousness

Which prostrate clings around Thy feet

Loosing itself in blissfulness.

28-9-1933

We All

We all are little children here,

In the Mother's spacious lap;

No Time — destroyer need we fear,

She fills us with immortal sap.

 

What if the head be hoary, and.

The back be bent down like a bow,

The touch of Mother's mystic hand

Makes us like new-born children grow.

 

The stars shall twinkle in our eyes,

And roses bloom upon our face,

Out-lawed are sorrows, tears and sighs,

By Mother's all-victorious Grace.

 

Why crave we then for worldly pleasures

Or for proudly sounding names,

For hollow are even heaven's treasures,

And its ceaseless happy games.

 

To us the dust of Mother's feet

Is worth all gold of earth and sky;

In Mother's heart to have a seat,

Is joy of joy that- will not die.

28-9-1933

The Mother Leads

A dreary desert — land was this,

Where fire rained from every scorching side;

At last we found an oasis,

In the Mother's shade where hope and faith abide.

Her flowered and life-giving breath,

Has pushed away the fiery desert wind,

And set in flight the scourge of death

Whose sly fierce menace hunted us behind.

But Nandan is now blooming there

With all its mystery of wonder-flowers;

And nectar-fountains everywhere

Refresh the new-born beauty of its bowers.

The Mother leads across the sand,

Her every glorious step transforming it

Into a heaven-teeming land

Where gods and godlike men have come to meet.

We need but follow their guiding print

With lightened heart and happy smiling eyes

To reach Her royal golden mint,

And Her joy wealth, currency of Paradise.

30-9-1933

I Desire not

I desire not high heaven,

Nor the thorny thrones of earth;

In me Thy kingdoms seven

Have together come to birth.

 

My soul no more is thirsting

To escape away above,

For the very abyss-depths are bursting

With Thy seas of joy and love.

 

Illusion's dreams dissolving

Are effaced by Thy sweet smile,

I am left in joy revolving

Like the star-heavens all the while.

 

Thy beauty wonder-glorious

To earth brings Nandan's breath,

And Thy love sublime and victorious

Has destroyed the power of death.

 

2-10-1933

A Miracle

No more shall death, disease or grey sorrow

Prey on the children of the Light,

In Her heart She gives refuge and relief

And holds them in Her hand of might.

No fear can overtake them there

The danger-hosts shall be laid low

By Her light-sword's fiery stare,

And Her flashing lightning-blow.

She has unfurled the Supreme's flag

On earth and in the burning hell,

And the grey dolorous heaps of slag,

Heavens radiant flowers with fragrance fill.

The Mother's sons can freely play

In sky and earth and yet below,

For everywhere there dawns like day

Our Mother's face with love aglow.

A miracle is every step

Of my Mother, my Supreme queen,

The great heavens race in an atom's gap

With the stars and suns between.

3-10-1933

A Child in its Mother's Arms

I saw a little lusty child

That carolled in its mother's arms;

And on its face a jasmine smiled;

It knew no fears nor dark alarms.

 

Its lively limbs danced gaily on

Like waves on a river's joyful heart;

Deep in its eyes star-twinkles shone;

Wonder dwelt in its glances apart.

 

Why has it turned its face above

With tender, longing, dreamy eyes?

Has it beheld a kindred dove,

Or heard the heaven-dwellers' sighs?

 

For surely gods might envy much

The soothing warmth of an earthly hearth,

And feel desire to be such

A cherub on this blessed earth.

 

Innocence is its very breath,

And life a silver spring of joy,

Its heart a dew-pearled rosy wreath

Which God above would fain enjoy.

 

Its mother felt too justly proud

That her own happy arms did hold

A Monarch, sung by all aloud,

Robed by her heart in love's wide gold.

 

9-10-1933

She is All Sweetness

All sweetness is She — our Mother divine,

And makes us drunk with ambrosial wine.

This wine from the essence of love She brews;

And it sparkles with joy's eternal hues.

Her heart is a honey-comb where in each cell,

Spacious as heaven, oceans of sweet honey swell

For us, Her children allaying our dearth,

To make Paradise here of the woeful earth.

Her eyes heart-inviting rain kindness and grace

Bathing in showers of Her deep sweetness;

Her smile is of moonbeams a gossamer charm

In which we forget earth's pain and alarm.

Her touch is the most miraculous

Of all things ever felt or known;

It drowns us in nectar rapturous

Building to godhead flesh and bone.

10-10-1933

Mahakali

Mahakali is that intimate flame

Which shoots beyond the farthest stars

And burns to ashes every dam

That meets her passage with its bars.

 

She is the conquering force of God,

Incarnate the primeval fire

To which the heavens overawed

Bow down and praise in burning choir.

 

That lion fierce, death incarnate,

Is tamed and made to do her will,

Her speed surpassing Time prostrate

Reduces shore less space to nil.

 

Immersed in her wild dance her foot

Is seen stepping from star to star,

From nether worlds to heavens remote,

Making the low high, near the far.

 

Behind her trail thick clouds of dust

Of pounded globes beneath her feet,

When springs she in her lightning-lust

To score the world with victor hit.

 

In battle singly she goes wielding

Her dazzling thousand thunder-bolts.

Leading Truth's children, ever shielding

From the dread Night's obscure assaults.

 

No evil will can dare withstand

Her courage-melting fiery glare

That burns away the life of grand

Titans with its steel-pointed stare.

Her breath arouses sweeping storms

That shake and lay high mountains low

As frail before it as the worms

That crawl in dust on earth below.

 

She has no hesitating scruples

And knows not shirking timid fears;

To shatter Night's malignant troubles

Gleam out her matchless lightning spears.

 

A scourge of flinch less death is she

To those who hate the Lord supreme,

Her wrath pursues them where they flee

And overtakes when safe they seem.

 

O, with one hand she striketh down

But with the other hand to raise;

Lain at her feet, to them is shown

Her red redeeming burning grace.

 

Adored by the heroic soul

And worshipped by high spirits great,

Mahakali plays her fiery role

To win for God His Truth's estate.

 

She seems all harshness, yet is she

All kindness in her heart's deep heart,

Her love the most intense and free

Is sweetness in its every part.

 

Her blows are blessings poured to mould

Our steel-hard dark rebellious nature

Into the Divine's shape of gold

All glorious with love and rapture.

 

12-10-1933

Thy Name is a Joy

Thy name is a joy beyond measure

I ever knew;

Thy love is a limitless treasure

Possessed by few.

 

Thy smile is my wane less moon —

My delight and my peace,

Thy touch a miraculous boon,

All troubles to ease.

 

Thy immortal breath is my life

On earth or above.

In a moment end sorrow and strife

At the embrace of Thy love.

 

16-10-1933

My One Desire

This is my one desire:-

O near Thee, always near

To be from hour to hour,

From breath to breath, and dear,

 

In wakefulness or sleep,

In illness and in health,

High luck or fortune's dip,

Thy presence is my wealth.

 

Before Thee hum my dreams

Like bees before a flower,

Enjoy Thy honey streams,

Drench in Thy scented shower.

 

A prisoning mirror my eyes.

Thy lovely face to lure,

My soul's celestial skies

Thy eternal home and pure.

 

18-10-1933

The Mother on the Terrace

The Mother on the terrace of Her temple is standing

With the glorious gold clouds of the heavens around Her;

And the Eve with her luminous flowers is attending

Her worship in air's hallowed still precincts of wonder.

She's the Vision of envisioned sublimest maternity

Attracting all hearts with Her star-sweetened glance

She evokes in each soul Her own luminous eternity

And drowns the abyss in Her rapturous trance.

A high wave of a deep adoration is rising

From each atom of lately relieved blessed earth,

Our mortality prostrate with glowing lips kissing

Her feet that stream nectar allaying our dearth.

The blue sea is serenely reciting Her hymn

And all space is resounding with songs of devotion,

A joy-tide runs maddened overflowing its brim,

And the lazy slow wind is in rapturous commotion.

Even the Sun-god retiring has stretched out his arms

For one touch of the dust of Her feet from afar,

Her sweet memory lives in his lone heart and warms

When he races through the frozen blue skies in his car.

Now the heavens awake from their bright-knighted day,

And reopen their millions of eyes from above

For a glimpse of the Mother they are yearning to pray

With a fire of true tears as their offering of love.

The great Mother receives all our prayers though belated

And out-pours Her rich boon of maternal delight :

The fallen are raised and the dead recreated;

All transfigured in Her hands spread out in the Night.

18-10-1933

Let Every Moment of my Life

Let every moment of my life

Be richly fraught with Thy remembrance.

Thy touch, the glory of Thy smile,

The enchantment of Thy mystic semblance.

O! let Thy magic breath awake

In me a-sleep celestial spring;

As in bright new-born fragrant bowers

Let Thy hued bird of Beauty sing.

O! bathe me in the shining waters

Of Thy great gracious Ganges pure,

O! wrap me in Thy star-embroidered

Robe of heaven's vast azure.

Since ages in this desert-world,

A ghost, I wandered dead with dearth;

O! with Thy ceaseless nectar-fountains

Drench me and revive to birth.

My eyes are blinded by earth's cold

And densely settled starless night,

O! let Thy golden dawn reveal

Thy supreme Sun's victorious light.

Lull, lull life's jarring noises, still

Its harsh discordant troubling stress.

Pour Thy harmonious rhythms there,

Thy waves of sweetness and of peace.

O! keep me spelled for ever-more,

With Thy voice, Thy face, heaven's mighty charms,

And let my little self be lost

In Thy close rapture-circling arms. 

19-10-1933

The Mother Calls

"The Mother calls you up"

Her angel brought the news —.

A sweetest nectar-cup :

My soul took heaven's hues.

 

With a dancing heart I thought

"What shall I give to-day

My coffer's hold is nought,

I'd give the bloom of May".

 

I looked into my bower

If I by chance could meet

One lovely little flower

To place before Her feet.

 

But barren was my bower!

No flower was there in bloom.

How shall I then worship Her?

I drooped and fell in gloom.

 

But in a nook I found

A rose-bud, hope to mend;

And felt that I was crowned

By Fortune's lenient hand.

 

And now at Mother's glance

The bud has burst in flower,

My spirit climbed in trance

To joy's sublimest tower.

 

19-10-1933 

At Thy Feet

My will shall dissolve in Thine

That wields the power of the Truth eternal,

Released from the undivine

Desires that are tomblike depths of the infernal.

Thy wisdom, the guide of my action

Revealing Thy glory with each true step,

Shall lead me to stainless perfection,

Which only they win who are born for Thy lap.

I shall lose myself at Thy feet

And be vacantly vast like the heavenly seas.

Expectant and patient I sit

To be filled with Thy being's immensities.

20-10-1933

The Moth's Yearning

Remote is my beloved star

And flimsy are my wings,

Powerless to cross the distance-bar

And break through night's hard rings.

 

There beams on me a beckoning smile,

That vibrates in the vast:

Hope rises in my heart a-while

But sinks in gloom at last.

 

Had I the light-swift eagle's wings

Storm and space to defy,

I'd break night's adamantine rings

And to my star-goal fly.

 

21-10-1933

My Joy

In the warmth of Thy works

my joy-spring shall be born,

And love-flowers of worship

and star-snowy peace

Adoring Thy feet with the rose-tears of morn

And a hymn from the low-humming heart of their bees.

My idle long hours in Thy

moon-beams shall drowse,

Unconscious of care and the

hard stress and strife

And a voiceless silence in

my soul shall arouse

Dream-worlds of a blissful

ambrosial life.

22-10-1933

In The Clasp

I feel a Presence in the masque of Time,

Much closer than the air I breathe;

I hear the sweetness of a silver chime,

Through the dense and dull material sheath.

A something intimate has gathered me

In its ambrosial deep embrace;

Enraptured prisoner, I could not free

Myself from that enchanting gaze.

A spring-breath smooths with its uplifting kiss

My arid bowers drooped in swoon,

A flower-glory and a tuneful bliss

Keep in my soul sweet honey-moon.

My long nights are dissolved in dawn's rose-light

Gold-life's athrob in each new cell,

My heart in an ocean riot of delight,

Quivers to each moment's carnival bell.

24-10-1933

The Hoary Fisher

Beyond the ocean of far-extended space,

Where giant storms are raised by the breath of Time,

Beyond the blue where light-globes roll apace,

And the milky way to an unknown nebulous clime.

He sits — the hoary Fisher with his hook,

On the edge of the shore less incomprehensible sea

Of nectar, knitting his nets in a quiet nook,

While aeons heave on their way through eternity.

Silently he spreads wide his gossamer nets, —

Nets of his tenderest, blissful brimming love —

In the brine-bitter sea of existence that moans and frets,

And subterranean fires around it rove.

A soul now and then in a piteous state of pain

Gets caught in his net and it struggles hard to be free;

With a smile he takes it out from the bitter main

And slides it smoothly into his nectar-sea.

28-10-1933

To Whom?

To whom should the child call

But to its mother,

When sorrows on it fall

The soul to smother?

 

Absorbed in happy toys

And childish pleasure,

And tossed by dancing joys

It may forget her.

 

But when through pleasure's guise

A face of horror

Offers itself to eyes

Like a dewy mirror,

 

The wail of its anguished heart

Calls to the mother,

Till her sweet succours dart

Like light from the ether.

 

Then on the mother's arm

The child reviving

Plays freed from harsh alarm,

In a moon-sea diving.

 

4-11-1933

The All-Beautiful

The lucent sky is but a visible sign

Of an infinite Being beyond the scan of mind;

Remotest yet nearest, His love wide and benign

Clasps all these worlds and keeps them rapture-blind.

The countess stars are His arrows of brilliance shrill

That rend the murky night of the heart of Time,

In the violence of His omnipotent will,

A leaping, hungry flame of Truth sublime.

The golden Sun is that blazing jewel, His heart,

And the Moon a crystal drop of

His Delight; His breath is these wandering winds that life impart

To all that's created and guarded by His Might.

The All-beautiful is here and charms us all,

With His toneless music attracts the wandering sense,

And captured by His smile He drowns the soul

In His being's plumb less nectar-ocean immense.

6-11-1933

The Golden Touch

From the murky caves of the sunless sea emerge

A meute of dark grey clouds; in a tidal surge

They roll behind the fast retiring Sun,

But benign its golden orb and peaceful its gaze

And it sheds a silent blessing on Earth ablaze

With her fire of worship — her hymn that is but begun.

The unconquered lord with his fiery pointed light

Stretches a slender finger quiet and bright:

And all the alarms and sufferings of the long day

Afire in a moment show piled on the western sky;

And their dismal forms dissolved and burnt away,

In a new born golden glory pass and die.

10-11-1933

The-Night-Sky

I love to gaze at the silent sky in the night

When all possess the wealth of a care-free leisure,

And heaven's star-eyed birds on wings of light

Swirl through the forbidding murk the Vast to measure.

The outward-running senses are lulled and drawn

Within and the wandering mind in rest is pent,

And thought like an arrow is shot at the unknown

From a rainbow-coloured dream-arch finely bent.

The sight from the blinding dull material mass

Released as though by a kindly unseen hand,

With a speed that the very light cannot surpass,

Wanders far in a boundless mystic land.

And as the star-rapt eyes entranced come home,

A music ethereal heard from the voiceless sky

Vibrates within the vacant inner dome;

It drowns my being in sweetness as I lie.

A something behind the seeming mask of night

Attracts the wakeful faith of the slumbering soul;

A peace unceasing drizzles down and light

From the far off galaxies speaks of the spirit's goal.

13-11-1933

The Eternal Call

With a myriad upraised waving arms He calls

And calls, — a heaving ocean of joy eternal:

The echoes roll from pleasure-lighted halls

To wailing depths cavernous and infernal.

"Come to my breast, come, come, children of Night,

Be freed from your woe and weakness and burden of sin,

To dance for ever in my sapphire-shine of delight

And play with my rubies and star-worth pearls within.

Unbarred are my gates to every man, be he

King or a beggar, a fallen one or pure;

Whatever path you follow leads to me,

Who am your home and hearth and your sorrow's cure.

Through ravaging Time's both day and night He calls,

But none has heard or all the voice ignore;

As sealed within grey nightmare-haunted walls

They be though He comes knocking at their door.

15-11-1933

Maheshwari

Her lotus-throne is borne by the luminous Vast;

The star-studded sky is Her foot-rest sapphire-blue;

Great Time heralds Her steps with his trumpet-blast;

To the worlds and their destiny she is the gleaming clue.

Majestic serene is she in Her high-held Truth

Her peace shines out God's glory here to enhance;

She gives Her gold-suns from out of Her bounteous Ruth

To souls that aspire prostrated before Her trance.

17-11-1933