I do not attach much importance to the publication or non publication of my poetry and never have done. Most of it (the published part) appeared five, ten, fifteen or even thirty or more years after they were written. The few recently published in magazines (not all of them new, e.g. the sonnets) owed their fate to Nolini's eagerness and not to my initiative. But the vast bulk of what I have written (long poems mostly) lies on shelf and in drawer, most of it for more than a decade, awaiting either dissolution or an interminable revision or total recasting which at the present rate may well retain them there a decade or two more. But that is my own idiosyncrasy—it cannot be a rule or example for others.
Thy youth is but a noon, of night take heed,— A noon that is a fragment of a day, And the swift eve all sweet things bears away, All sweet things and all bitter, rose and weed. For others' bliss who lives, he lives indeed.
But thou art pitiful and ruth shouldst know. I bid thee trifle not with fatal love, But save our pride and dear one, O my dove, And heaven and earth and the nether world below Shall only with thy praises peopled grow.
Life is a bliss that cannot long abide, But while thou livest, love. For love the sky Was founded, earth upheaved from the deep cry Of waters, and by love is sweetly tied The golden cordage of our youth and pride.
(Suggested by an old Bengali poem)
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