Part 9

The nations that in fettered darkness weep Crave thee to lead them where great mornings break . . . . Mother, O Mother, wherefore dost thou sleep? Arise and answer for thy children's sake!

Thy Future calls thee with a manifold sound To crescent honours, splendours, victories vast; Waken, O slumbering Mother and be crowned, Who once wert empress of the sovereign Past.

THE ROYAL TOMBS OF GOLCONDA

I muse among these silent fanes Whose spacious darkness guards your dust; Around me sleep the hoary plains That hold your ancient wars in trust. I pause, my dreaming spirit hears, Across the wind's unquiet tides, The glimmering music of your spears, The laughter of your royal brides.

In vain, O Kings, doth time aspire To make your names oblivion's sport, While yonder hill wears like a tier The ruined grandeur of your fort. Though centuries falter and decline, Your proven strongholds shall remain Embodied memories of your line, Incarnate legends of your reign.

O Queens, in vain old Fate decreed Your flower-like bodies to the tomb; Death is in truth the vital seed Of your imperishable bloom Each new-born year the bulbuls sing Their songs of your renascent loves; Your beauty wakens with the spring To kindle these pomegranate groves.

TO A BUDDHA SEATED ON A LOTUS

Lord Buddha, on thy Lotus-throne, With praying eyes and hands elate, What mystic rapture dost thou own, Immutable and ultimate? What peace, unravished of our ken, Annihilate from the world of men?

The wind of change for ever blows Across the tumult of our way, To-morrow's unborn griefs depose The sorrows of our yesterday. Dream yields to dream, strife follows strife,

And Death unweaves the webs of Life.

For us the travail and the heat, The broken secrets of our pride, The strenuous lessons of defeat, The flower deferred, the fruit denied; But not the peace, supremely won, Lord Buddha, of thy Lotus-throne.

With futile hands we seek to gain Our inaccessible desire, Diviner summits to attain, With faith that sinks and feet that tire; But nought shall conquer or control The heavenward hunger of our soul.

The end, elusive and afar, Still lures us with its beckoning flight, And all our mortal moments are A session of the Infinite. How shall we reach the great, unknown Nirvana of thy Lotus-throne?