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(From Guests of the State)
SHE | |
| Who follows quickly—if she woman be— | |
| Is clad in a loose robe, whose flowing folds | |
| Mold out the shape they cover, and discover | |
| To the eye of lord and lover, | 5 |
| The strong limbs, girdled waist, the arm that holds | |
| Her island children, and the breasts that feed: | |
| Woman and mother, why that manly stride, | |
| And the two swords at thy side? | |
| Offended or defended, who must bleed? | 10 |
| Her face is powdered, painted, and her hair, | |
| Drawn high above her head, with pins of gold | |
| Is fastened: if light olive tints are fair, | |
| Fair is her oval face, though overbold; | |
| Good-humor lights it, frankness, and the grace | 15 |
| Of high-born manner, honor, pride of place: | |
| But, looking closer, keener, we discern | |
| Something that can be stern, | |
| Like the dark tempests on her mountain highlands, | |
| The wild typhoons that whirl around her thousand islands! | 20 |
| Most bounteous here, as in her sea-girt lands, | |
| Where she stretches forth her hands, | |
| Plucks cocoas and bananas in woods of oak and pine,— | |
| Grapes on every vine, | |
| And walks on gold and silver, and knows her power increased, | 25 |
| Nor fears her nobles longer—the Lady of the East! | |
| |
| What words of what great poet can declare | |
| This woman’s fallen greatness, her despair, | |
| The melancholy light in her mild eyes? | |
| She neither lives nor dies! | 30 |
| First-born of Earth’s First Mother, she gave birth | |
| To the infant races, and her dwelling-place | |
| Cradled the young religions: face to face, | |
| Her many gods and children walked the earth. | |
| (Who could know, when Life began, | 35 |
| Which was god and which was man? | |
| Her mountains are the bases of the sky, | |
| Where the gods brooded, uncreate, eternal, | |
| Celestial and infernal— | |
| Indra everywhere, and Siva nigh, | 40 |
| Thunder voice that in the summer speaks— | |
| Shadow of the wings that fly— | |
| Arrow in the bended bow! | |
| Did they wander down the mountain peaks, | |
| Through the clouds and everlasting snow? | 45 |
| Or did men clamber up and fetch them down below? | |
| Who may know | |
| What their heads and hands portend; | |
| What the beasts whereon they ride, | |
| And whether these be deified; | 50 |
| What was in the beginning and shall be in the end? | |
| What matter? Things like these— | |
| Struggles to ascend the ladder of the air, | |
| Plunges to reach unbottomed mysteries— | |
| Have been thy ruin, India, once so fair, | 55 |
| So powerful, prayerful! Hands that clasp in prayer | |
| Let go the sword and sceptre: thou hast seen | |
| Thine roughly wrested from thee, and hast been | |
| A prey to many spoilers, some thine own: | |
| Timor proclaimed himself thy Emperor; | 60 |
| And Baber conquered, beaten thrice before; | |
| And Nadir took thy glorious Peacock Throne; | |
| And others, Hindoo, Moslem, self-made kings, | |
| Carved out rich kingdoms from thy wide domains— | |
| Had violent, bloody reigns, | 65 |
| And perished (the gods be thanked!) like meaner things, | |
| If meaner, crueller in thy forests be, | |
| Among the wolves and jackals skulking there, | |
| And dreadful tigers roaring in their lair, | |
| Than these foul beasts that so dismembered thee! | 70 |
| O mortal and divine! | |
| The largeness of the primitive world is thine: | |
| The everlasting handiwork remains, | |
| In the high mountain ranges, the broad plains, | |
| The wastes, and vast, impenetrable woods, | 75 |
| (Oppressive solitudes | |
| Where no man was!) the multitudinous rivers— | |
| The gods were generous givers, | |
| If from the heavenly summit of Meru, | |
| Beyond all height, they sent the Ganges down; | 80 |
| Or is it, Goddess, from thy mountained crown, | |
| Far lifted in the inaccessible blue, | |
| Its waters, rising in perpetual snow, | |
| Come in swift torrents, swollen in their flow | |
| By larger rivers, others swelling them, | 85 |
| All veins to this long stem | |
| Of thy great leaf of verdure? Sacred River, | |
| That from Gangotri goest to the Sea, | |
| Past temples, cities, peoples—Holy Stream, | |
| Whom but to hear of, wish for, see, or touch, | 90 |
| Bathe in, or sing old hymns to day by day, | |
| Whom but to name a hundred leagues away, | |
| Was to atone for all the sins committed | |
| In three past lives (for Vishnu so permitted) | |
| O Ganges! would the Powers could re-deliver | 95 |
| Thy virtues lost, or we renew the dream: | |
| We can restore so much, | |
| India, we cannot yet relinquish Thee! | |
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