The Coromandel Fishers

Rise, brothers, rise; the wakening skies pray to the morning light,

The wind lies asleep in the arms of the dawn like a child that has cried all night.

Come, let us gather our nets from the shore and set our catamarans free,

To capture the leaping wealth of the tide, for we are the kings of the sea!

No longer delay, let us hasten away in the track of the sea gull's call,

The sea is our mother, the cloud is our brother, the waves are our comrades all.

What though we toss at the fall of the sun where the hand of the sea-god drives?

He who holds the storm by the hair, will hide in his breast our lives.

Sweet is the shade of the cocoanut glade, and the scent of the mango grove,

And sweet are the sands at the full o' the moon with the sound of the voices we love;

But sweeter, O brothers, the kiss of the spray and the dance of the wild foam's glee;

Row, brothers, row to the edge of the verge, where the low sky mates with the sea.

Sarojini Naidu

Transcience

Nay, do not grieve tho' life be full of sadness,

Dawn will not veil her spleandor for your grief,

Nor spring deny their bright, appointed beauty

To lotus blossom and ashoka leaf.

Nay, do not pine, tho' life be dark with trouble,

Time will not pause or tarry on his way;

To-day that seems so long, so strange, so bitter,

Will soon be some forgotten yesterday.

Nay, do not weep; new hopes, new dreams, new faces,

The unspent joy of all the unborn years,

Will prove your heart a traitor to its sorrow,

And make your eyes unfaithful to their tears.

Sarojini Naidu

The Soul's Prayer

In childhood's pride I said to Thee:

"O Thou, who mad'st me of Thy breath,

Speak, Master, and reveal to me

Thine inmost laws of life and death.

"Give me to drink each joy and pain

Which Thine eternal hand can mete,

For my insatiate soul can drain

Earth's utmost bitter, utmost sweet.

"Spare me no bliss, no pang of strife,

Withhold no gift or grief I crave,

The intricate lore of love and life

And mystic knowledge of the grave."

Lord, Thou didst answer stern and low:

"Child, I will hearken to thy prayer,

And thy unconquered soul shall know

All passionate rapture and despair.

"Thou shalt drink deep of joy and fame,

And love shall burn thee like a fire,

And pain shall cleanse thee like a flame,

To purge the dross from thy desire.

"So shall thy chastened spirit yearn

To seek from its blind prayer release,

And spent and pardoned, sue to learn

The simple secret of My peace.

I, bending from my sevenfold height,

Will teach thee of My quickening grace,

Life is a prism of My light,

And Death the shadow of My face."

Sarojini Naidu

In Salutation to the Eternal Peace

Men say the world is full of fear and hate,

And all life's ripening harvest-fields await

The restless sickle of relentless fate.

But I, sweet Soul, rejoice that I was born,

When from the climbing terraces of corn

I watch the golden orioles of Thy morn.

What care I for the world's desire and pride,

Who know the silver wings that gleam and glide,

The homing pigeons of Thine eventide?

What care I for the world's loud weariness,

Who dream in twilight granaries Thou dost bless

With delicate sheaves of mellow silences?

Say, shall I heed dull presages of doom,

Or dread the rumoured loneliness and gloom,

The mute and mythic terror of the tomb?

For my glad heart is drunk and drenched with Thee,

O inmost wind of living ecstasy!

O intimate essence of eternity!

Sarojini Naidu