Collected Poems

Suddenly Out from the Wonderful East

Suddenly out from the wonderful East like a woman exulting
Dawn stepped forth with a smile on her lips, and the glory of morning
Hovered over the hills; then sweet grew air with the breezes,
Sweet and keen as a wild swift virgin; the wind walked blithely,
Low was the voice of the leaves as they rustled and talked with the river,
Ganges, the sacred river. Down from the northlands crowding,
Touching the steps of the ghauts with the silver tips of their fingers
Lightly the waters ran and talked to each other of sunshine,
Lightly they laughed. But high on his stake impaled by the roadway
Hung Mandavya the mighty in marble deep meditation,
Sepulchred, dumb; on his either side were the thieves, immobile.
They were dead, made free from cruelty, ceasing from anguish,
And forgetting the thirst. But past them Ganges the mighty,
First of the streams of the earth, our Mother, remembering the ages,
Poured to the sea.
Early at dawn by her ghauts the women of Mithila gathered.
There they filled their gurgling jars, or gilding the Ganges
Bathed in her waters and laughed as they bathed there clamouring, dashing
Dew of her coolness in eyes of each other: the banks called sweetly
Mad with the musical laughter of girls and joy of their crying,
Low melodious cries. As when in a wood on the hillsides
Thousands of bulbuls flitting and calling, eating the wild plums,
Filling the ear with sweetness carry from treetop to treetop
Vermeil of crest and scarlet of tail and small brown bodies
Flitting and calling, calling and flitting, full of sweet clamour,
Full of the wine of life, even such was the sweetness and clamour,
Women bathing close by the ghauts of the radiant Ganges,
Golden-limbed or white or darker than olives when ripest,
Lovely of face or of mood, but all sweethearted and happy
Aryan women. One there seemed of another moulding
Who was aloof from the crowd and the chaos of cheerful faces.
She at one side of the stairway slowly like one half-musing
Bathed there, hiding her face in the deep cool bosom of waters,
Losing herself in Ganges, or let its pearl drops dribble

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Quietly down through the mystical night of her tresses on gleaming
Shoulders, betwixt her great breasts noble as hills at noontide
Back to their hurrying home: nor heeded the laughter near her.
Only at times when the clamour grew high, she would look up smiling
Such a slow sweet serious smile as a tender mother
Watching her children at play might smile forgetting the sorrow
Down in her own still patient heart where the deep tears gathered
Swell unwept, till they turn to a sea of sorrowful pity.