Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SALSETTE AND ELEPHANTA, by JOHN RUSKIN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SALSETTE AND ELEPHANTA, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Tis eve -- and o'er the face of parting day
Last Line: And seeks redemption from the incarnate god.
Subject(s): Elephanta Caves, India; Hinduism; Religion; Salsette (island), India; Sculpture & Sculptors; Theology


'TIS eve—and o'er the face of parting day
Quick smiles of summer lightning flit and play;
In pulses of broad light, less seen than felt,
They mix in heaven, and on the mountains melt;
Their silent transport fills the exulting air—
'Tis eve, and where is evening half so fair?
Oh! deeply, softly sobs the Indian sea
O'er thy dark sands, majestic Dharavee,
When, from each purple hill and polished lake,
The answering voices of the night awake
The fitful note of many a brilliant bird,—
The lizard's plunge, o'er distant waters heard,—
The thrill of forest leaves—how soft, how swift
That floats and follows where the night-winds drift;
Or, piercing through the calmness of the sky,
The jungle tiger's sharp and sudden cry.
Yet all is peace, for these weak voices tell
How deep the calm they break but not dispel.
The twilight heaven rolls on, like some deep stream
When breezes break not on its moving dream;
Its trembling stars continual watches keep
And pause above Canarah's haunted steep;
Each in its path of first ascension hid
Behind the height of that pale pyramid,—
(The strength of nations hewed the basalt spire,
And barbed its rocks like sacrificial fire.)
Know they the hour's approach, whose fateful flight
Was watched of yore from yonder cloudless height?
Lone on its utmost peak, the Prophet Priest
Beheld the night unfolded from the East;
In prescient awe perused its blazing scroll,
And read the records stretched from Pole to Pole;
And though their eyes are dark, their lips are still,
Who watched and worshipped on Canarah's hill,
Wild superstition's visionary power
Still rules and fills the spirit of the hour:
The Indian maiden, through the scented grove,
Seeks the dim shore, and lights the lamp of love;
The pious peasant, awe-struck and alone,
With radiant garland crowns the purple stone,
And shrinks, returning through the star-lit glade,
When breezes stir the peepul's sacred shade;
For well his spirit knows the deep appeal
That love must mourn to miss, yet fear to feel;
Low sounds, faint rays, upon the senses shed—
The voices of the lost, the dark eyes of the dead.
How awful now, when night and silence brood
O'er Earth's repose and Ocean's solitude,
To trace the dim and devious paths that guide
Along Canarah's steep and craggy side,
Where, girt with gloom—inhabited by fear,—
The mountain homes of India's gods appear!
Range above range they rise, each hollow cave
Darkling as death, and voiceless as the grave;
Save that the waving weeds in each recess
With rustling music mock its loneliness;
And beasts of blood disturb, with stealthy tread,
The chambers of the breathless and the dead.
All else of life, of worship, past away,
The ghastly idols fall not, nor decay;
Retain the lip of scorn, the rugged frown;
And grasp the blunted sword and useless crown;
Their altars desecrate, their names untold,
The hands that formed, the hearts that feared—how cold!
Thou too—dark Isle! whose shadow on the sea
Lies like the gloom that mocks our memory
When one bright instant of our former lot
Were grief, remembered, but were guilt, forgot.
Rock of the lonely crest! how oft renewed
Have beamed the summers of thy solitude,
Since first the myriad steps that shook thy shore
Grew frail and few—then paused for evermore!
Answer—ye long-lulled echoes! Where are they
Who clove your mountains with the shafts of day;
Bade the swift life along their marble fly,
And struck their darkness into deity,
Nor claimed from thee—pale temple of the wave—
Record or rest, a glory or a grave?
Now all are cold—the votary as his god,—
And by the shrine he feared, the courts he trod,
The livid snake extends his glancing trail,
And lifeless murmurs mingle on the gale.

Yet glorious still, though void, though desolate,
Proud Dharapori! gleams thy mountain gate,
What time, emergent from the eastern wave,
The keen moon's crescent lights thy sacred cave;
And moving beams confuse, with shadowy change,
Thy columns' massive might and endless range.
Far, far beneath, where sable waters sleep,
Those radiant pillars pierce the crystal deep,
And mocking waves reflect, with quivering smile,
Their long recession of refulgent aisle;
As, where Atlantis hath her lonely home,
Her grave of guilt, beneath the ocean's foam;
Above the lifeless hearth and guardless gate,
The wildly-walking surges penetrate,
And sapphire tints of phosphor lightning fall
O'er the broad pillar, and the sculptured wall.—
So, Dharapori! through thy cold repose
The flooding lustre of the moonlight flows;
New forms of fear, by every touch displayed,
Gleam, pale and passioned, through the dreadful shade,
In wreathed groups of dim, distorted life,
In ghastly calmness, or tremendous strife;
While glaring eye and grasping hand attest
The mocked emotion of the marble breast.
Thus in the fevered dream of restless pain,
Incumbent horror broods upon the brain,
Through mists of blood colossal shapes arise,
Stretch their stiff limbs, and roll their rayless eyes.
Yet knew not here the chisel's touch to trace
The finer lineaments of form and face;
No studious art of delicate design
Conceived the shape, or lingered on the line.
The sculptor learned, on Indus' plains afar,
The various pomp of worship and of war;
Impetuous ardor in his bosom woke,
And smote the animation from the rock.
In close battalions kingly forms advance,
Wave the broad shield, and shake the soundless lance;
With dreadful crests adorned, and orient gem,
Lightens the helm and gleams the diadem;
Loose o'er their shoulders falls their flowing hair
With wanton wave, and mocks the unmoving air;
Broad o'er their breasts extend the guardian zones
Broidered with flowers, and bright with mystic stones;
Poised in ætherial march they seem to swim,
Majestic motion marked in every limb;
In changeful guise they pass—a lordly train,
Mighty in passion, unsubdued in pain;
Revered as monarchs, or as gods adored,
Alternately they rear the sceptre and the sword.
Such were their forms and such their martial mien,
Who met by Indus' shores the Assyrian queen,
When, with reverted force, the Indian dyed
His javelin in the pulses of her pride,
And cast in death-heaps, by the purple flood,
Her strength of Babylonian multitude.

And mightier ones are there—apart—divine,
Presiding genii of the mountain shrine:
Behold, the giant group, the united three,
Faint symbol of an unknown Deity!
Here, frozen into everlasting trance,
Stern Siva's quivering lip and hooded glance;
There, in eternal majesty serene,
Proud Brahma's painless brow and constant mien;
There glows the light of Veeshnu's guardian smile,
But on the crags that shade yon inmost aisle
Shine not, ye stars! Annihilation's lord
There waves, with many an arm, the unsated sword.
Relentless holds the cup of mortal pain,
And shakes the spectral links that wreathe his ghastly chain.
Oh, could these lifeless lips be taught to tell
(Touched by Chaldean art, or Arab spell)
What votaries here have knelt, what victims died,
In pangs, their gladness, or in crimes, their pride,
How should we shun the awful solitude,
And deem the intruding footsteps dashed in blood!
How might the altar-hearths grow warm and red,
And the air shadowy with avenging dead!
Behold!—he stirs—that cold, colossal king!—
'Tis but the uncertain shade the moonbeams fling;
Hark! a stern voice awakes with sudden thrill!—
'Twas but the wandering wind's precarious will:
The distant echo dies, and all the cave is still.

Yet Fancy, floating on the uncertain light,
Fills with her crowded dreams the course of night;
At her wild will æthereal forms appear,
And sounds, long silent, strike the startled ear:
Behold the dread Mithratic rite reclaim
Its pride of ministers, its pomp of flame!
Along the winding walls, in ordered row,
Flash myriad fires—the fretted columns glow;
Beaming above the imitative sky
Extends the azure of its canopy,
Fairest where imaged star and airy sprite
Move in swift beauty and entrancing light;
A golden sun reflected lustre flings,
And wandering Dewtahs wave their crimson wings;
Beneath, fed richly from the Arabian urn,
Undying lamps before the altar burn;
And sleepless eyes the sacred sign behold,
The spiral orb of radiated gold;
On this the crowds of deep voiced priests attend,
To this they loudly cry, they lowly bend;
O'er their wan brows the keen emotions rise,
And pious phrenzy flashes from their eyes;
Phrenzy in mercy sent, in torture tried,
Through paths of death their only guard and guide,
When, in dread answer to their youth's appeal,
Rose the red fire and waved the restless steel,
And rushed the wintry billow's wildest wreck,—
Their God hath called them, and shall danger check?
On—on—for ever on, though roused in wrath
Glare the grim lion on their lonely path;
Though, starting from his coiled malignant rest,
The deadly dragon lift his crimson crest;
Though corpse-like shadows round their footsteps flock,
And shafts of lightning cleave the incumbent rock;
On, for behold, enduring honors wait
To grace their passage through the golden gate;
Glorious estate, and more than mortal power,
Succeed the dreadful expiating hour;
Impurpled robes their weary limbs enfold
With stars enwoven, and stiff with heavenly gold;
The mitra veils their foreheads, rainbow-dyed,
The measured steps imperial sceptres guide;
Glorious they move, and pour upon the air
The cloud of incense and the voice of prayer;
While through the hollow vault, around them rise
Deep echoes from the couch of sacrifice,
In passioned gusts of sound,—now loud, now low,
With billowy pause, the mystic murmurs flow
Far dwindling on the breeze. Ere yet they die
Canarah hears, and all his peaks reply;
His crested chasms the vocal winds explore,
Waste on the deep, and wander on the shore.
Above, the starry gloom is thrilled with fear,
The forests shake, the circling hamlets hear,
And wake to worship. Many an isle around,
Assembling votaries swell the sacred sound,

And, troop by troop, along the woodland ways,
In equal measures pour responsive praise:
To Mithra first their kindling songs addressed,
Lull his long slumbers in the watery west;
Next to the strength of each celestial sign
They raise the choral chaunt, the breathing line;
Keen through the arch of heaven their hymns arise,
Auspicious splendors deck the answering skies.
The sacred cohorts, maddening as they sing,
Far through the air their flashing torches fling;
From rock to rock the rushing glories leap,
Climb the wide hills, and clothe the central steep,
Till through the endless night a living line
Of lustre opens on the bounding brine;
Ocean rejoices, and his isles prolong;
With answering zeal, those bursts of flame and song,
Till the strong vulture on Colombo's peak
Awakes with ruffled plume and startled shriek,
And the roused panther of Almorah's wood
Howls through his violated solitude.

'Tis past,—the mingled dream,—though slow and grey
On mead and mountain break the dawning day;
Though stormy wreaths of lingering cloud oppress
Long time the winds that breathe—the rays that bless,—
They come, they come. Night's fitful visions fly
Like autumn leaves, and fade from fancy's eye;
So shall the God of might and mercy dart
His day-beams through the caverns of the heart;
Strike the weak idol from its ancient throne,
And vindicate the temple for His own.
Nor will He long delay. A purer light
Than Mithra cast, shall claim a holier rite;
A mightier voice than Mithra's priests could pour
Resistless soon shall sound along the shore;
Its strength of thunder vanquished fiends shall own,
And idols tremble through their limbs of stone.

Vain now the lofty light—the marble gleam—
Of the keen shaft that rose by Gunga's stream!
When round its base the hostile lightnings glowed,
And mortal insult mocked a god's abode,
What power, Destroyer, seized with taming trance
Thy serpent sceptre, and thy withering glance?
Low in the dust, its rocky sculptures rent,
Thine own memorial proves thee impotent.
Thy votaries mourn thy cold unheeding sleep,
Chide where they praised, and where they worshipped weep.

Yes—he shall fall, though once his throne was set
Where the high heaven and crested mountains met;
Though distant shone with many an azure gem
The glacier glory of his diadem;
Though sheets of sulphurous cloud and wreathed storm
Cast veil of terror round his shadowy form.
All, all are vain! It comes, the hallowed day,
Whose dawn shall rend that robe of fear away;
Then shall the torturing spells that midnight knew
Far in the cloven dells of Mount Meru,
Then shall the moan of frenzied hymns, that sighed
Down the dark vale where Gunga's waters glide,
Then shall the idol chariot's thunder cease
Before the steps of them that publish peace.
Already are they heard,—how fair, how fleet,
Along the mountains flash their bounding feet!
Disease and death before their presence fly;
Truth calls, and gladdened India hears the cry,
Deserts the darkened path her fathers trod,
And seeks redemption from the Incarnate God.





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