India's Love Lyrics
You are all that is lovely to me,
All that is light,
One white rose in a Desert of weariness.
I only live in the night,
The night, with its fair false dreams of you,
You and your loveliness.
Give me your love for a day,
A night, an hour:
If the wages of sin are Death
I am willing to pay.
What is my life but a breath
Of passion burning away?
Away for an unplucked flower.
O Aziza whom I adore,
Aziza my one delight,
Only one night, I will die before day,
And trouble your life no more.
The Aloe
My life was like an Aloe flower, beneath an orient sky,
Your sunshine touched it for an hour; it blossomed but to die.
Torn up, cast out, on rubbish heaps where red flames work their will
Each atom of the Aloe keeps the flower-time fragrance still.
Memory
How I loved you in your sleep,
With the starlight on your hair!
The touch of your lips was sweet,
Aziza whom I adore,
I lay at your slender feet,
And against their soft palms pressed,
I fitted my face to rest.
As winds blow over the sea
From Citron gardens ashore,
Came, through your scented hair,
The breeze of the night to me.
My lips grew arid and dry,
My nerves were tense,
Though your beauty soothe the eye
It maddens the sense.
Every curve of that beauty is known to me,
Every tint of that delicate roseleaf skin,
And these are printed on every atom of me,
Burnt in on every fibre until I die.
And for this, my sin,
I doubt if ever, though dust I be,
The dust will lose the desire,
The torment and hidden fire,
Of my passionate love for you.
Aziza whom I adore,
My dust will be full of your beauty, as is the blue
And infinite ocean full of the azure sky.
In the light that waxed and waned
Playing about your slumber in silver bars,
As the palm trees swung their feathery fronds athwart the stars,
How quiet and young you were,
Pale as the Champa flowers, violet veined,
That, sweet and fading, lay in your loosened hair.
How sweet you were in your sleep,
With the starlight on your hair!
Your throat thrown backwards, bare,
And touched with circling moonbeams, silver white
On the couch's sombre shade.
O Aziza my one delight,
When Youth's passionate pulses fade,
And his golden heart beats slow,
When across the infinite sky
I see the roseate glow
Of my last, last sunset flare,
I shall send my thoughts to this night
And remember you as I die,
The one thing, among all the things of this earth, found fair.
How sweet you were in your sleep,
With the starlight, silver and sable, across your hair!
The First Lover
As o'er the vessel's side she leant,
She saw the swimmer in the sea
With eager eyes on her intent,
"Come down, come down and swim with me."
So weary was she of her lot,
Tired of the ship's monotony,
She straightway all the world forgot
Save the young swimmer in the sea
So when the dusky, dying light
Left all the water dark and dim,
She softly, in the friendly night,
Slipped down the vessel's side to him.
Intent and brilliant, brightly dark,
She saw his burning, eager eyes,
And many a phosphorescent spark
About his shoulders fall and rise.
As through the hushed and Eastern night
They swam together, hand in hand,
Or lay and laughed in sheer delight
Full length upon the level sand.
"Ah, soft, delusive, purple night
Whose darkness knew no vexing moon!
Ah, cruel, needless, dawning light
That trembled in the sky too soon!"
Khan Zada's Song on the Hillside
The fires that burn on all the hills
Light up the landscape grey,
The arid desert land distills
The fervours of the day.
The clear white moon sails through the skies
And silvers all the night,
I see the brilliance of your eyes
And need no other light.
The death sighs of a thousand flowers
The fervent day has slain
Are wafted through the twilight hours,
And perfume all the plain.
My senses strain, and try to clasp
Their sweetness in the air,
In vain, in vain; they only grasp
The fragrance of your hair.
The plain is endless space expressed;
Vast is the sky above,
I only feel, against your breast,
Infinities of love.
Deserted Gipsy's Song: Hillside Camp
She is glad to receive your turquoise ring,
Dear and dark-eyed Lover of mine!
I, to have given you everything:
Beauty maddens the soul like Wine.
"She is proud to have held aloof her charms,
Slender, dark-eyed Lover of mine!
But I, of the night you lay in my arms:
Beauty maddens the sense like Wine!
"She triumphs to think that your heart is won,
Stately, dark-eyed Lover of mine!
I had not a thought of myself, not one:
Beauty maddens the brain like Wine!
"She will speak you softly, while skies are blue,
Dear, deluded Lover of mine!
I would lose both body and soul for you:
Beauty maddens the brain like Wine!
"While the ways are fair she will love you well,
Dear, disdainful Lover of mine!
But I would have followed you down to Hell:
Beauty maddens the soul like Wine!
"Though you lay at her feet the days to be,
Now no longer Lover of mine!
You can give her naught that you gave not me:
Beauty maddened my soul like Wine!
"When the years have shown what is false or true:
Beauty maddens the sight like Wine!
You will understand how I cared for you,
First and only Lover of mine!"
The Plains
How one loves them
These wide horizons; whether Desert or Sea,--
Vague and vast and infinite; faintly clear--
Surely, hid in the far away, unknown "There,"
Lie the things so longed for and found not, found not, Here.
Only where some passionate, level land
Stretches itself in reaches of golden sand,
Only where the sea line is joined to the sky-line, clear,
Beyond the curve of ripple or white foamed crest,--
Shall the weary eyes
Distressed by the broken skies,--
Broken by Minaret, mountain, or towering tree,--
Shall the weary eyes be assuaged,--be assuaged,--and rest.
"Lost Delight"
After the Hazara War
I lie alone beneath the Almond blossoms,
Where we two lay together in the spring,
And now, as then, the mountain snows are melting,
This year, as last, the water-courses sing.
That was another spring, and other flowers,
Hung, pink and fragile, on the leafless tree,
The land rejoiced in other running water,
And I rejoiced, because you were with me.
You, with your soft eyes, darkly lashed and shaded,
Your red lips like a living, laughing rose,
Your restless, amber limbs so lithe and slender
Now lost to me. Gone whither no man knows.
You lay beside me singing in the sunshine;
The rough, white fur, unloosened at the neck,
Showed the smooth skin, fair as the Almond blossoms,
On which the sun could find no flaw or fleck.
I lie alone, beneath the Almond flowers,
I hated them to touch you as they fell.
And now, who killed you? worse, Ah, worse, who loves you?
(My soul is burning as men burn in Hell.)
How I have sought you in the crowded cities!
I have been mad, they say, for many days.
I know not how I came here, to the valley,
What fate has led me, through what doubtful ways.
Somewhere I see my sword has done good service,
Some one I killed, who, smiling, used your name,
But in what country? Nay, I have forgotten,
All thought is shrivelled in my heart's hot flame.
Where are you now, Delight, and where your beauty,
Your subtle curls, and laughing, changeful face?
Bound, bruised and naked (dear God, grant me patience),
And sold in Cabul in the market-place.
I asked of you of all men. Who could tell me?
Among so many captured, sold, or slain,
What fate was yours? (Ah, dear God, grant me patience,
My heart is burnt, is burnt, with fire and pain.)
Oh, lost Delight! my heart is almost breaking,
My sword is broken and my feet are sore,
The people look at me and say in passing,
"He will not leave the village any more."
For as the evening falls, the fever rises,
With frantic thoughts careering through the brain,
Wild thoughts of you. (Ah, dear God, grant me patience,
My soul is hurt beyond all men call pain.)
I lie alone, beneath the Almond blossoms,
And see the white snow melting on the hills
Till Khorassan is gay with water-courses,
Glad with the tinkling sound of running rills,
And well I know that when the fragile petals
Fall softly, ere the first green leaves appear,
(Ah, for these last few days, God, grant me patience,)
Since Delight is not, I shall not be, here!
Unforgotten
Do you ever think of me? you who died
Ere our Youth's first fervour chilled,
With your soft eyes and your pulses stilled
Lying alone, aside,
Do you ever think of me, left in the light,
From the endless calm of your dawnless night?
I am faithful always: I do not say
That the lips which thrilled to your lips of old
To lesser kisses are always cold;
Had you wished for this in its narrow sense
Our love perhaps had been less intense;
But as we held faithfulness, you and I,
I am faithful always, as you who lie,
Asleep for ever, beneath the grass,
While the days and nights and the seasons pass,--
Pass away.
I keep your memory near my heart,
My brilliant, beautiful guiding Star,
Till long life over, I too depart
To the infinite night where perhaps you are.
Oh, are you anywhere? Loved so well!
I would rather know you alive in Hell
Than think your beauty is nothing now,
With its deep dark eyes and tranquil brow
Where the hair fell softly. Can this be true
That nothing, nowhere, exists of you?
Nothing, nowhere, oh, loved so well
I have _never_ forgotten.
Do you still keep
Thoughts of me through your dreamless sleep?
Oh, gone from me! lost in Eternal Night,
Lost Star of light,
Risen splendidly, set so soon,
Through the weariness of life's afternoon
I dream of your memory yet.
My loved and lost, whom I could not save,
My youth went down with you to the grave,
Though other planets and stars may rise,
I dream of your soft and sorrowful eyes
And I cannot forget.
Song of Faiz Ulla
Just at the time when Jasmins bloom, most sweetly in the summer weather,
Lost in the scented Jungle gloom, one sultry night we spent together
We, Love and Night, together blent, a Trinity of tranced content.
Yet, while your lips were wholly mine, to kiss, to drink from, to caress,
We heard some far-off faint distress; harsh drop of poison in sweet wine
Lessening the fulness of delight,--
Some quivering note of human pain,
Which rose and fell and rose again, in plaintive sobs throughout the night,
Spoiling the perfumed, moonless hours
We spent among the Jasmin flowers.
Story of Lilavanti