Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE INDIAN SONG OF SONGS (GITA GOVINDA): SARGA THE SEVENTH, by JAYADEVA



Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE INDIAN SONG OF SONGS (GITA GOVINDA): SARGA THE SEVENTH, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Meantime the moon, the rolling moon, clomb high
Last Line: Nadaranarayano.)
Subject(s): Beauty; Soul


VIPRALABDHAVARNANE
NAGARANARAYANO.

KRISHNA SUPPOSED FALSE.

Meantime the moon, the rolling moon, clomb high,
And over all Vrindávana it shone;
The moon which on the front of gentle night
Gleams like the chundun-mark on beauty's brow;
The conscious moon which hath its silver face
Marred with the shame of lighting earthly loves:

And while the round white lamp of earth rose higher,
And still he tarried, Radha, petulant,
Sang soft impatience and half-earnest fears:

What follows is to the Music MALAVA and the Mode YATI.)

'Tis time!—he comes not!—will he come!
Can he leave me thus to pine?
Yami hé kam sharanam!
Ah, what refuge then is mine?

For his sake I sought the wood,
Threaded dark and devious ways;
Yami hé kam sharanam!
Can it be Krishna betrays!

Let me die then, and forget
Anguish, patience, hope, and fear;
Yami hé kam sharanam!
Ah, why have I held him dear?

Ah, this soft night torments me,
Thinking that his faithless arms—
Yami hé kam sharanam!
Clasp some shadow of my charms.

Fatal shadow—foolish mock!
When the great love shone confessed;
Yami hé kam sharanam!
Krishna's lotus loads my breast;

'Tis too heavy, lacking him;
Like a broken flower I am—
Necklets, jewels, what are ye?
Yami hé kam sharanam!

Yami hé kam sharanam!
The sky is still, the forest sleeps;
Krishna forgets—he loves no more;
He fails in faith, and Radha week

But the poet Jayadev—
He who is great Hari's slave,
He who finds asylum sweet
Only at great Hari's feet;
He who for your comfort sings
All this to the Vina's strings—
Prays that Radha's tender moan
In your hearts be thought upon,
And that all her holy grace
Live there like the loved one's face.

Yet if I wrong him! (sang she)—can he fail?
Could any in the wood win back his kisses?
Could any softest lips of earth prevail
To hold him from my arms?—any love-blisses

Blind him once more to mine? Oh, Soul, my prize!
Art thou not merely hind red at this hour?
Sore-wearied, wandering, lost? how otnerwise
Shouldst thou not hasten to the bridal-bower?

But seeing far away that Maiden come
Alone, with eyes cast down and lingering steps,
Again a little while she feared to hear
Of Krishna false; and her quick thoughts took shape
In a fine jealousy, with words like these—

Something then of earth has held him
From his home above,
Some one of those slight deceivers—
Ah, my foolish love!
Some new face, some winsome playmate,
With her hair untied,
And the blossoms tangled in it,
Woos him to her side.

On the dark orbs of her bosom—
Passionately heaved—
Sink and rise the warm, white pearl-strings,
Oh, my love deceived!

Fair? Yes, yes! the rippled shadow
Of that midnight hair
Shows above her brow—as clouds do
O'er the moon—most fair:

And she knows, with wilful paces,
How to make her zone
Gleam and please him; and her ear-rings
Tinkle love; and grown

Coy as he grows fond, she meets him
With a modest show;
Shaming truth with truthful seeming,
While her laugh—light, low—

And her subtle mouth that murmurs,
And her silken cheek,
And her eyes say she dissembles
Plain as speech could speak.

Till at length, a fatal victress,
Of her triumph vain,
On his neck she lies and smiles there:—
Ah, my Joy!—my Pain!

But may Radha's fond annoy,
And may Krishna's dawning joy,
Warm and waken love more fit—
Jayadeva prayeth it—
And the griefs and sins assuage
Of this blind and evil age.

Oh, Moon! (she sang) that art so pure and pale,
Is Krishna wan like thee with lonely waiting?
Oh, lamp of love! art thou the lover's friend,
And wilt not bring him, my long pain abating?
Oh, fruitless moon! thou dost increase my pain
Oh, faithless Krishna! I have striven in vain.

And then, lost in her fancies sad, she moaned—

(What follows is to the Music GURJJARI and the Mode EKATALÎ.)

In vain, in vain!
Earth will of earth! I mourn more than I blame;
If he had known, he would not sit and paint
The tilka on her smooth black brow, nor claim
Quick kisses from her yielded lips—false, faint—
False, fragrant, fatal! Krishna's quest is o'er
By Jumna's shore!

Vain—it was vain.
The temptress was too near, the heaven too far;
I can but weep because he sits and ties
Garlands of fire-flowers for her loosened hair,
And in its silken shadow veils his eyes
And buries his fond face. Yet I forgave
By Jumna's wave!

Vainly! all vain!
Make then the most of that whereto thou'rt given,
Feign her thy Paradise—thy Love of loves;
Say that her eyes are stars, her face the heaven,
Her bosoms the two worlds, with sandal-groves
Full-scented, and the kiss-marks—ah, thy dream
By Jumna's stream!

It shall be vain!
And vain to string the emeralds on her arm,
And hang the mi ky pearls upon her neck,
Saying they are not jewels, but a swarm
Of crowded, glossy bees, come there to suck
The rosebuds of her breast, the sweetest flowers
Of Jumna's bowers.

That shall be vain!
Nor wilt thou so believe thine own blind wooing,
Nor slake thy heart's thirst even with the cup
Which at the last she brims for thee, undoing
Her girdle of carved gold, and yielding up
Love's uttermost: brief the poor gain and pride
By Jumna's tide.

Because still vain
Is love that feeds on shadow: vain, as thou dost,
To look so deep into the phantom eyes
For that which lives not there; and vain, as thou must,
To marvel why the painted pleasure flies,
When the fair, false wings seemed folded forever
By Jumna's river.

And vain! yes, vain!
For me too is it, having so much striven,
To see this slight snare take thee, and thy soul
Which should have climbed to mine, and shared my heaven,
Spent on a lower loveliness, whose whole
Passion of claim were but a parody
Of that kept here for thee.

Ahaha! vain!
For on some isle of Jumna's silver stream
He gives all that they ask to those hard eyes,
While mine which are his angel's, mine which gleam
With light that might have led him to the skies—
That almost led him—are eclipsed with tears
Wailing my fruitless prayers.

But thou, good Friend,
Hang not thy head for shame, nor come so slowly
As one whose message is too ill to tell;
If thou must say Krishna is forfeit wholly—
Wholly forsworn and lost—let the grief dwel
Where the sin doth,—except in this sad heart,
Which can not shun its part.

Oh, great Hari! purge from wrong
The soul of him who writes this song;
Purge the souls of those that read
From every fault of thought and deed,
With thy blessèd light assuage
The darkness of this evil age!
Jayadev, the bard of love,
Servant of the Gods above,
Prays it for himself and you—
Gentle hearts who listen!—too.

Then in this other strain she wailed his loss—

(What follows is to the Music DESHAVARADÎ and the Mode RUPAKA.)

She, not the Radha, wins the crown
Whose false lips were dearest;
What was distant gain to him
When sweet loss stood nearest?
Love her, therefore, lulled to loss
On her fatal bosom;
Love her with such love as she
Can give back in the blossom.

Love her, oh, thou rash lost soul!
With thy thousand graces;
Coin rare thoughts into fair words
For her face of faces;
Praise it, fling away for it
Life's purpose in a sigh,
All for those lips like flower-leaves,
And lotus-dark deep eye.

Nay, and thou shalt be happy too
Till the fond dream is over;
And she shall taste delight to hear
The wooing of her lover;
The breeze that brings the sandal up
From distant green Malay,
Shall seem all fragrance in the night,
All coolness in the day.

The crescent moon shall seem to swim
Only that she may see
The glad eyes of my Krishna gleam,
And her soft glances he:
It shall be as a silver lamp
Set in the sky to show
The rose-leaf palms that cling and clasp
And the breast that beats below.

The thought of parting shall not lie
Cold on their throbbing lives,
The dread of ending shall not chill
The glow beginning gives;
She in her beauty dark shall look—
As long as clouds can be—
As gracious as the rain-time cloud
Kissing the shining sea.

And he, amid his playmates old,
At least a little while,
Shall not breathe forth again the sigh
That spoils the song
Shall be left wholly to his choice,
Free for his pleasant sin,
With the golden-girdled damsels
Of the bowers I found him in.

For me, his Angel, only
The sorrow and the smart,
The pale grief sitting on the brow,
The dead hope in the heart;
For me the loss of losing,
For me the ache and dearth;
My king crowned with the wood-flowers!
My fairest upon earth!

Hari, Lord and King of love!
From thy throne of light above
Stoop to help us, deign to take
Our spirits to thee for the sake
Of this song, which speaks the fears
Of all who weep with Radha's tears.

But love is strong to pardon, slow to part,
And still the Lady, in her fancies, sang—
Wind of the Indian stream!
A little—oh, a little—breathe once more
The fragrance like his mouth's! blow from thy shore
One last word as he fades into a dream.

Bodiless Lord of love!
Show him once more to me a minute's space,
My Krishna, with the love-look in his face,
And then I come to my own place above.

I will depart and give
All back to Fate and her: I will submit
To thy stern will, and bow myself to it,
Enduring still, though desolate, to live:

If it indeed be life,
Even so resigning, to sit patience-mad,
To feel the zephyrs burn, the sunlight sad,
The peace of holy heaven a restless strife.

Haho! what words are these?
How can I live and lose him? How not go
Whither love draws me for a soul loved so?
How yet endure such sorrow?—or how cease?

Wind of the Indian wave!
If that thou canst, blow poison here, not nard;
God of the five shafts! shoot thy sharpest hard,
And kill me, Radha,—Radha who forgave!

Or, bitter River,
Yamûn! be Yama's sister! be Death's kin!
Swell thy wave up to me and gulf me in,
Cooling this cruel, burning pain forever.

Ah, if only visions stir Grief so passionate in her,
What divine grief will not take,
Spirits in heaven for the sake
Of those who miss love? Oh, be wise!
Mark this story of the skies;
Meditate Govinda ever,
Sitting by the sacred river,
The mystic stream, which o'er his feet
Glides slow, with murmurs low and sweet,
Till none can tell whether those be
Blue lotus-blooms, seen veiledly
Under the wave, or mirrored gems
Reflected from the diadems
Bound on the brows of mighty Gods,
Who lean from out their pure abodes,
And leave their bright felicities
To guide great Krishna to his skies.

(Here ends that Sarga of the Gîta Govinda entitled VIPRALABDHAVARNANE
NADARANARAYANO.)





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...



Home: PoetryExplorer.net