The Queen's Rival By Sarojini Naidu

The Queen's Rival

QUEEN GULNAAR sat on her ivory bed,

Around her countless treasures were spread;

Her chamber walls were richly inlaid

With agate, porphory, onyx and jade;

The tissues that veiled her delicate breast,

Glowed with the hues of a lapwing's crest;

But still she gazed in her mirror and sighed

"O King, my heart is unsatisfied."

King Feroz bent from his ebony seat:

"Is thy least desire unfulfilled, O Sweet?

"Let thy mouth speak and my life be spent

To clear the sky of thy discontent."

"I tire of my beauty, I tire of this

Empty splendour and shadowless bliss;

To My Fairy Fancies

NAY, no longer I may hold you,

In my spirit's soft caresses,

Nor like lotus-leaves enfold you

In the tangles of my tresses.

Fairy fancies, fly away

To the white cloud-wildernesses,

Fly away!

Nay, no longer ye may linger

With your laughter-lighted faces,

Now I am a thought-worn singer

In life's high and lonely places.

Fairy fancies, fly away,

To bright wind-inwoven spaces,

Fly away!

To Youth

O YOUTH, sweet comrade Youth, wouldst thou be gone?

Long have we dwelt together, thou and I;

Together drunk of many an alien dawn,

And plucked the fruit of many an alien sky.

Ah, fickle friend, must I, who yesterday

Dreamed forwards to long, undimmed ecstasy,

Henceforward dream, because thou wilt not stay,

Backward to transient pleasure and to thee?

I give thee back thy false, ephemeral vow;

But, O beloved comrade, ere we part,

Upon my mournful eyelids and my brow

Kiss me who hold thine image in my heart.

Suttee

LAMP of my life, the lips of Death

Hath blown thee out with their sudden breath;

Naught shall revive thy vanished spark . . .

Love, must I dwell in the living dark?

Tree of my life, Death's cruel foot

Hath crushed thee down to thy hidden root;

Nought shall restore thy glory fled . . .

Shall the blossom live when the tree is dead?

Life of my life, Death's bitter sword

Hath severed us like a broken word,

Rent us in twain who are but one . .

Shall the flesh survive when the soul is gone?

Transience

Nay, do not grieve tho' life be full of sadness,

Dawn will not veil her splendour for your grief,

Nor spring deny their bright, appointed beauty

To lotus blossom and ashoka leaf.

Nay, do not pine, tho' life be dark with trouble,

Time will not pause or tarry on his way;

To-day that seems so long, so strange, so bitter,

Will soon be some forgotten yesterday.

Nay, do not weep; new hopes, new dreams, new faces,

The unspent joy of all the unborn years,

Will prove your heart a traitor to its sorrow,

And make your eyes unfaithful to their tears.

My Dead Dream

HAVE YOU found me, at last, O my Dream? Seven eons ago

You died and I buried you deep under forests of snow.

Why have you come hither? Who bade you awake from your sleep

And track me beyond the cerulean foam of the deep?

Would you tear from my lintels these sacred green garlands of leaves?

Would you scare the white, nested, wild pigeons of joy from my eaves?

Would you touch and defile with dead fingers the robes of my priest?

Would you weave your dim moan with the chantings of love at my feast?

Go back to your grave, O my Dream, under forests of snow,

Where a heart-riven child hid you once, seven eons ago.

Who bade you arise from your darkness? I bid you depart!

Profane not the shrines I have raised in the clefts of my heart

Alabaster

Like this alabaster box whose art

Is frail as a cassia-flower, is my heart,

Carven with delicate dreams and wrought

With many a subtle and exquisite thought.

Therein I treasure the spice and scent

Of rich and passionate memories blent

Like odours of cinnamon, sandal and clove,

Of song and sorrow and life and love.

A Love Song From The North

Tell me no more of thy love, papeeha,

Wouldst thou recall to my heart, papeeha,

Dreams of delight that are gone,

When swift to my side came the feet of my lover

With stars of the dusk and the dawn?

I see the soft wings of the clouds on the river,

And jewelled with raindrops the mango-leaves quiver,

And tender boughs flower on the plain…..

But what is their beauty to me, papeeha,

Beauty of blossom and shower, papeeha,

That brings not my lover again?

Tell me no more of thy love, papeeha,

Wouldst thou revive in my heart, papeeha

Grief for the joy that is gone?

I hear the bright peacock in glimmering woodlands

Cry to its mate in the dawn;

I hear the black koel's slow, tremulous wooing,

And sweet in the gardens the calling and cooing

Of passionate bulbul and dove….

But what is their music to me, papeeha

Songs of their laughter and love, papeeha,

To me, forsaken of love?

In Salutation To The Eternal Peace

Men say the world is full of fear and hate,

And all life's ripening harvest-fields await

The restless sickle of relentless fate.

But I, sweet Soul, rejoice that I was born,

When from the climbing terraces of corn

I watch the golden orioles of Thy morn.

What care I for the world's desire and pride,

Who know the silver wings that gleam and glide,

The homing pigeons of Thine eventide?

What care I for the world's loud weariness,

Who dream in twilight granaries Thou dost bless

With delicate sheaves of mellow silences?

Say, shall I heed dull presages of doom,

Or dread the rumoured loneliness and gloom,

The mute and mythic terror of the tomb?

For my glad heart is drunk and drenched with Thee,

O inmost wind of living ecstasy!

O intimate essence of eternity!

Indian Dancers

Eyes  ravished with rapture, celestially panting, what passionate bosoms aflaming with fire

Drink deep of the hush of the hyacinth heavens that glimmer around them in fountains of light;

O wild and entrancing the strain of keen music that cleaveth the stars like a wail of desire,

And beautiful dancers with houri-like faces bewitch the voluptuous watches of night.

The scents of red roses and sandalwood flutter and die in the maze of their gem-tangled hair,

And smiles are entwining like magical serpents the poppies of lips that are opiate-sweet;

Their glittering garments of purple are burning like tremulous dawns in the quivering air,

And exquisite, subtle and slow are the tinkle and tread of their rhythmical, slumber-soft feet.

Now silent, now singing and swaying and swinging, like blossoms that bend to the breezes or showers,

Now wantonly winding, they flash, now they falter, and, lingering, languish in radiant choir;

Their jewel-girt arms and warm, wavering, lily-long fingers enchant through melodious hours,

Eyes ravished with rapture, celestially panting, what passionate bosoms aflaming with fire!

Song Of A Dream

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.

Cradle Song

From groves of spice,

O'er fields of rice,

Athwart the lotus-stream,

I bring for you,

Aglint with dew

A little lovely dream.

Sweet, shut your eyes,

The wild fire-flies

Dance through the fairy neem;

From the poppy-bole

For you I stole

A little lovely dream.

Dear eyes, good-night,

In golden light

The stars around you gleam;

On you I press

With soft caress

A little lovely dream.

Wandering Singers

WHERE the voice of the wind calls our wandering feet,

Through echoing forest and echoing street,

With lutes in our hands ever-singing we roam,

All men are our kindred, the world is our home.

Our lays are of cities whose lustre is shed,

The laughter and beauty of women long dead;

The sword of old battles, the crown of old kings,

And happy and simple and sorrowful things.

What hope shall we gather, what dreams shall we sow?

Where the wind calls our wandering footsteps we go.

No love bids us tarry, no joy bids us wait:

The voice of the wind is the voice of our fate.

To The God Of Pain

Unwilling priestess in thy cruel fane,

Long hast thou held me, pitiless god of Pain,

Bound to thy worship by reluctant vows,

My tired breast girt with suffering, and my brows

Anointed with perpetual weariness.

Long have I borne thy service, through the stress

Of rigorous years, sad days and slumberless nights,

Performing thine inexorable rites.

For thy dark altars, balm nor milk nor rice,

But mine own soul thou'st ta'en for sacrifice:

All the rich honey of my youth's desire,

And all the sweet oils from my crushed life drawn,

And all my flower-like dreams and gem-like fire

Of hopes up-leaping like the light of dawn.

I have no more to give, all that was mine

Is laid, a wrested tribute, at thy shrine;

Let me depart, for my whole soul is wrung,

And all my cheerless orisons are sung;

Let me depart, with faint limbs let me creep

To some dim shade and sink me down to sleep.