Collected Poems

The Tale of Nala - I

Nala, Nishadha's king, paced by a stream
Which ran, escaping from the solitudes
To flow through gardens in a pleasant land.
Murmuring it came of the green souls of hills
And of the towns and hamlets it had seen,
The brown-limbed peasants toiling in the sun,
And the tired bullocks in the thirsty fields.
In its bright talk and laughter it recalled
The moonlight and the lapping dangerous tongues,
The sunlight and the skimming wings of birds,
And gurgling jars, and bright bathed limbs of girls
At morning, and its noons and lonely eves.
This memory to the jasmine trees it sang
Which dropped their slow white petalled kisses down
Upon its haste of curling waves. Far off
A mountain rose, alone and purple vague,
Wide-watching from its large stone-lidded eye
The drowsy noontide earth; vastly outspread
Like Vindhya changed, against the height of heaven
It stood and on the deep-blue nearness leaned
Its shoulder in a mighty indolence.
Reclined for giant rest the Titan paused.
The birds were voiceless on the unruffled boughs;
The spotted lizard in a dull unease
Basked on his sentinel stone, a single kite
Circled above; white-headed over rust
Of brown and gold he stained the purple noon.
Solitary in the spaces of his mind
Among these sights and sounds King Nala paced
Oblivious of the joy of outward things.
Shrill and dissatisfied the wanderer's cry
Came to his ear; he saw with absent eyes
The rapid waters in their ripple run
Nor marked the ruddy sprouting of the leaves,
Nor heard the dove's rare cooing in the trees.

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His thoughts were with a face his dreams had seen
Diviner than the jasmine's moon-flaked glow;
He listened to a name his dreams had learned
Sweeter than passion of the crooning bird.
Its delicate syllables yearning through his mind
Repeated longingly the soft-wreathed call,
As if some far-off bright forgotten queen
From whom his heart had wandered through the world,
Were summoning back to her her truant thrall,
Luring him with the music of her name.
But soon some look on him he seemed to feel.
The summit self-uplifted to the sky
Mounting the air in act to climb and join
Heaven's sapphire longing with earth's green unease
Drew his far gaze, which conned as for a thought
The undecipherable charactery
Of rocks and mingled woods; but all was lost
In too much light. Dull glared the giant stones;
The woods, fallen sleepy on their mountain couch,
Had nestled in their coverlet of haze.
Like dim-seen shapes of virgins stoled in blue
In huddled grace sleeping close-limbed they lay.
Then from some covert bosom's shrouded riches
A revelation came; for like a gleam
Of beauty from a purple-guarded breast
One lovely glint of passionate whiteness broke.
Fluttering awhile towards him soon it fled
Seeking his vision; and its glowing race
Splintered the sapphire with its silvery hue,
And now a flame-bright flock of swans was seen
Flying like one and breasting with its shock
Of faery speed the vastness of the noon.
Not only with an argent flashing ran
The brilliant cohort on its skiey path,
But shaking from wild wings a hail of gold.
Heaven's lustrous tunic of transparent air
Regretted the bright ornament as they passed.

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They flew not like the snowy cranes, like wreaths
Of flowers driven in the rain-wind's breath,
When thunder calls them northward, but came fast
Ranked in magnificent and lovely lines,
Cleaving the air with splendour, while the pride
And rushing glory of their bosoms and wings
Assailed his eyes with silver and with flame.
Over the Nishadhan gardens flying round
They came down whirring softly, then filled awhile
With gentle clamour from their liquid throats
The region, and disturbed with dipping plumes
The turquoise slumber of the motionless lake
Lulled to unrippling rest by windless noon.
A hundred wonderful shapes in mystic crowd
Covered the water like a living robe.
Next on the stream they spread their glorious breasts.
Each close-ranked by her sweet companion's side,
Floating they came and preened above the flood
Their long and stately necks like curving flowers.
The water petted with enamoured waves
Their bosoms and the slow air swooned along
Their wings; their motion set a wordless chant
To flow against the chidings of the stream.
And hard to speak their beauty, what silver mass
On mass, what flakes and peacock-eyes of gold,
What passion of crimson flecked each pure white breast.
It seemed to his charmed sense that in this form
The loveliness of a diviner world
Had come to him winged. Their beauty to tender greed
Moved him of all that living silver and gold.

"For now thy heaven-born pride must learn to range
My gardens of the earth and haunt my streams,
And to my call consent. If thou resist
I will imprison thee in a golden cage
And bind thy beauty with a silver chain."
A laughter beautiful arose from her,

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Thrilling her throat with bubbling ecstasies,
Sweet, satisfied because he praised her grace.
And with mysterious mild deep-glowing eyes
In long and softly-wreathing syllables
The wonder spoke. "Release me, for no birds
Are we, O mortal, but the moon-bosomed nymphs
Who to the trance-heard music of the gods
Sway in the mystic dances of the sky,
Apsaras, daughters of the tumbling seas.
Shaped by thy fancy is my white-winged form."
But Nala to his bright prisoner swan replied:
"And more thou doomst thyself by all thy words,
Bird of desire or goddess luminous-limbed,
To satisfy my pride and my delight,
My divine captive and white-bosomed slave
Who stoopst to me from unattainable heavens.
Thou shalt possess my streams, O white-winged swan,
And dance, O Apsara, singing in my halls.
Between the illumined pillars thou shalt glide
When flute and breathing lyre and timbrel call,
Adorning with thy golden rhythmic limbs
The crystalline mosaic of my floors.
What I have seized by force, by force I keep."
Her eyes now smiled on him; submissively
She laid in all its tender curving grace
The long white wonder of her neck upraised
In suppliant wreaths against his bosom and pressed
Flatteringly her silver head upon his cheek
And with her soft alluring voice replied:
"Because thou art bright and beautiful and bold
So have I come to thee and thou hast seized
Whom if thou hadst set free, thy joy were lost.
So to thy mind from some celestial space
A name and face have come, yet are on earth,
Which if thou hadst not held with yearning's stays,
Thy mortal life would have been given in vain.
Forced by thy musing in the sapphire noon

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Out of the mountain's breast to thee I flew
Unknowing, a heavenly envoy to her heart
That was thy own by glad necessity
Before its beatings in her breast began.
All are the links of one miraculous chain."