Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, BUDDHA'S SWALLOW, by FRANCOIS COPPEE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

BUDDHA'S SWALLOW, by                    
First Line: When his new gospel had consoled mankind
Last Line: In one deep sob to weep a swallow's death.
Subject(s): Buddhism; Swallows; Buddha; Buddhists


WHEN his new gospel had consoled mankind
The Buddha to the wild his steps inclined,
And of Nirvana only was his thought.
Seated, with outstretched arms the void he sought;
And, resolute of soul and staunch of mood,
He lived in ecstasy and solitude.
A dream immutable his spirit lit
The while he gazed upon the infinite.
By Time his comely lineaments were dried
And, motionless, with body ossified,
O'er him the bindweed crept. The noonday sun
No longer from his lips a greeting won,
And from his sunken eyes and shrunken lids
Flashed e'er the flinty stare of pyramids.
Hence by his hunger had he been removed
Had not the birds by whom he was beloved,
The little birds that sang on bush and spray,
Laid fruit upon his withered lips each day.
As time-worn bronze of seer contemplative,
As death were life, life, death, did Buddha live.
A thousand times, thrice thousand, o'er his brow
The sun ascended, gilding leaf and bough,
The moon by night, that whitened bole and limb,
Yet ne'er a moment's pulse distracting him
From his thought's tenor and, as it would seem,
The thought's irradiation of his dream,
When in the cup of his immobile hand
Grown hard as granite, dry as desert sand,
A swallow in its flight sank down to rest
And 'twixt his calcined fingers made her nest.

Therein the exiled bird found sanctuary
And, ne'er discomfiting his ecstasy,
To her impassive dreamer's hand came back
When southward crept the ice and polar rack.
Leaping on airy wings scarped ridge and wave
She found again the peace that Buddha gave.
And then an autumn came that brought the flight
Of feathered exiles, drawn to warmth and light,
Yet no sweet bird in Buddha's hand to rest
Until at last the Himalaya's crest
Was covered o'er with snow -- Then, hope being dead,
Slowly the Buddha turned his ashen head
And saw his empty hand. The mystic's eyes,
Which stedfastly through time had searched the skies,
Sightless to aught on earth and crystalline
From gazing on the void's incarnadine,
His stony eyes, blood-branded by the years,
Filled suddenly and dropped two burning tears.
And he, whose spirit as a bowl had been
Held up for naught and hope of things unseen,
Who, fleeing life, yet summoned back his breath
In one deep sob to weep a swallow's death.





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