The Angel Flame

House in thy soul the flickerless lamp of love;

O way- lost dupe, relume the angel flame

In the wistful temple of dream: nurse in faith’s grove

The memorial rose of peace no thorn may shame.

 

Delivered from thy passions’ lurid gleams

And shadowing greeds, foes in the guise of friends,

Know: in the deep of hush the soul redeems:

She is the vanguard morn to darkness sends.

 

Her children in gloom, thy Motherland mourns and sighs,

Play Beauty’s flute like Krishna: thou art He.

If thou wilt wake- the world, a-quiver, shall rise

And mitred priests of love sing on with thee.

Hate never pays, though sorrows purify;

Be poised in thy Self of love – incarnate, free.

If love resign who shall reveal the sky?

Soul’s night is doom: her dawn – sure victory.

 

Be pledged to noble ways of the ancient Sun;

If lose thou must, let it be life – not love.

Shall clouds besiege thy star – dominion?

“Up! Time is fleeting!” – the bugle calls above!

 

 

From the Hindu Song of the Poet Abul Hafiz Jalandhari

 

 

Translated by:  Dilip Kumar Roy

Innocence – Patrick Kavanagh

They laughed at one I loved-
The triangular hill that hung
Under the Big Forth. They said
That I was bounded by the whitethorn hedges
Of the little farm and did not know the world.
But I knew that love’s doorway to life
Is the same doorway everywhere.
Ashamed of what I loved
I flung her from me and called her a ditch
Although she was smiling at me with violets.

But now I am back in her briary arms
The dew of an Indian Summer lies
On bleached potato-stalks
What age am I?

I do not know what age I am,
I am no mortal age;
I know nothing of women, Nothing of cities,
I cannot die Unless I walk outside these whitethorn hedges.

- Patrick Kavanagh

Tie Your Heart at Night to Mine

Tie your heart at night to mine, love,
and both will defeat the darkness
like twin drums beating in the forest
against the heavy wall of wet leaves.

Night crossing: black coal of dream
that cuts the thread of earthly orbs
with the punctuality of a headlong train
that pulls cold stone and shadow endlessly.

Love, because of it, tie me to a purer movement,
to the grip on life that beats in your breast,
with the wings of a submerged swan,

So that our dream might reply
to the sky’s questioning stars
with one key, one door closed to shadow.

Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda Poems

My God is Love and Sweetly Suffers All

I will take from thee the black eternal grip:
Clasping in thy heart thy fate’s exiguous dole
Depart in peace, if peace for man is just.”

But Savitri answered meeting scorn with scorn,
The mortal woman to the dreadful Lord:
“Who is this God imagined by thy night,
Contemptuously creating worlds disdained,
Who made for vanity the brilliant stars?
Not he who has reared his temple in my thoughts
And made his sacred floor my human heart.
My God is will and triumphs in his paths,
My God is love and sweetly suffers all.

- Sri Aurobindo

- excerpt from Savitri Book IV Canto II

A Thing of Beauty – Keats

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old, and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
‘Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven’s brink.

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The Eye of My Eye

By whose touch does the lily smile
And open its beauty – bud?
Whose moonlit beauty
Do I see in the lily?
Who is the Eye of my eye;
Who is the Heart of my heart?
Alas, then why do I not see Him,
His face of transcendental Beauty,
Even in my dreams?

- Sri Chinmoy

T’is So Much Joy – Emily Dickinson

’T is so much joy! ’T is so much joy!
If I should fail, what poverty!
And yet, as poor as I
Have ventured all upon a throw;
Have gained! Yes! Hesitated so
This side the victory!

Life is but life, and death but death!
Bliss is but bliss, and breath but breath!
And if, indeed, I fail,
At least to know the worst is sweet.
Defeat means nothing but defeat,
No drearier can prevail!

And if I gain,—oh, gun at sea,
Oh, bells that in the steeples be,
At first repeat it slow!
For heaven is a different thing
Conjectured, and waked sudden in,
And might o’erwhelm me so!

- Emily Dickinson

Ode 3079 – Rumi

We’ve come again to that knee of seacoast
no ocean can reach.
Tie together all human intellects.
They won’t stretch to here.
The sky bares its neck so beautifully,
but gets no kiss. Only a taste.
This is the food that everyone wants,
wandering the wilderness, “Please give us
Your manna and quail.”
We’re here again with the Beloved.
This air, a shout. These meadowsounds,
an astonishing myth.
We’ve come into the Presence of the One
who was never apart from us.
When the waterbag is filling, you know
the Water-carrier’s here!
The bag leans lovingly against Your shoulder.
“Without You I have no knowledge,
no way to touch anyone.”
When someone chews sugarcane,
he’s wanting this Sweetness.
Inside this globe the soul roars like thunder.
And now Silence, my strict tutor.
I won’t try to talk about Shams.
Language cannot touch that Presence.

From: Rumi – Like This
Versions by: Coleman Barks

Because Thou Art – Sri Aurobindo

Because Thou art All-beauty and All-bliss,
My soul blind and enamoured yearns for Thee ;
It bears Thy mystic touch in all that is
And thrills with the burden of that ecstasy.

Behind all eyes I meet Thy secret gaze
And in each voice I hear Thy magic tune :
Thy sweetness haunts my heart through Nature’s ways;
Nowhere it beats now from Thy snare immune.

It loves Thy body in all living things;
Thy joy is there in every leaf and stone:
The moments bring Thee on their fiery wings ;
Sight’s endless artistry is Thou alone

Time voyages with Thee upon its prow
And all the future’s passionate hope is Thou.

Sri Aurobindo

But wherefore do not you a mightier way

But wherefore do not you a mightier way
Make war upon this bloody tyrant, Time?
And fortify yourself in your decay
With means more blessed than my barren rhyme?
Now stand you on the top of happy hours,
And many maiden gardens yet unset
With virtuous wish would bear your living flowers,
Much liker than your painted counterfeit:
So should the lines of life that life repair,
Which this, Time’s pencil, or my pupil pen,
Neither in inward worth nor outward fair,
Can make you live yourself in eyes of men.
To give away yourself keeps yourself still,
And you must live, drawn by your own sweet skill.

- William Shakespeare