sunlight was over our mouths fears hearts lungs arms hopes feet hands
under us the unspeaking Mediterranean bluer than we had imagined a few cries drifting though high air a sail a fishing boat somebody an invisble spectator maybe certain nobodies laughing faintly
playing moving far below us
perhaps one villa caught like pieces of a kite in the trees, here and here reflecting sunlight (everywhere sunlight keen complete silent
and everywehre you your kisses your flesh mind breathing beside under around myself) by and by
a fat colour reared itself against the sky and the sea
. . . finally your eyes knew me, we smiled to each other, releasing lay, watching (sprawling, in grass upon a cliff)what had been something else carefully slowly fatally turning into ourselves . .
Something in this foggy day, a something which Is neither of this fog nor of today Has set me dreaming of the winds that play Past certain cliffs, along one certain beach, And turn the topmost edge of waves to spray: Ah pleasant pebbly strand so far away, So out of reach while quite within my reach, As out of reach as India or Cathay! I am sick of where I am and where I am not, I am sick of foresight and of memory, I am sick of all I have and all I see, I am sick of self, and there is nothing new; Oh weary impatient patience of my lot! — Thus with myself: how fares it, Friends, with you?
shut by our mingling arms through a darkness where new lights begin and increase, since your mind has walked into my kiss as a stranger into the streets and colours of a town–
that i have perhaps forgotten how,always(from these hurrying crudities of blood and flesh)Love coins His most gradual gesture,
and whittles life to eternity
–after which our separating selves become museums filled with skilfully stuffed memories
Our teachers teach that one and one make two: Later, Love rules that one and one make one: Abstruse the problems! neither need we shun, But skillfully to each should yield its due. The narrower total seems to suit the few, The wider total suits the common run; Each obvious in its sphere like moon or sun; Both provable by me, and both by you. Befogged and witless, in a wordy maze A groping stroll perhaps may do us good; If cloyed we are with much we have understood, If tired of half our dusty world and ways, If sick of fasting, and if sick of food; — And how about these long still-lengthening days?
Maan looked at her with half-longing, half-laughing eyes. ‘I’ll arrange for the car,’ he said.
‘I’ll walk in the garden till then,’ said Saeeda Bai. ‘This is the most beautiful time of night. Just have this’—she indicated the harmonium—‘and the other things—sent back to my place tomorrow morning. Well, then,’ she continued to the five or six people left in the courtyard:
‘Now Mir takes his leave from the temple of idols— We shall meet again . . .’
Maan completed the couplet: ‘. . . if it be God’s will.’
He looked at her for an acknowledging nod, but she had turned towards the garden already.
Saeeda Bai Firozabadi, suddenly weary ‘of all this’ (but what was ‘all this’?) strolled for a minute or two through the garden of Prem Nivas. She touched the glossy leaves of a pomelo tree. The harsingar was no longer in bloom, but a jacaranda flower dropped downwards in the darkness. She looked up and smiled to herself a little sadly. Everything was quiet: not even a watchman, not even a dog. A few favourite lines from a minor poet, Minai, came to her mind, and she recited, rather than sang, them aloud:
‘The meeting has dispersed; the moths Bid farewell to the candlelight. Departure’s hour is on the sky. Only a few stars mark the night. . . .’
She coughed a little—for the night had got chilly all of a sudden—wrapped her light shawl more closely around her, and waited for someone to escort her to her own house, also in Pasand Bagh, no more than a few minutes away.
In ‘The Rivered Earth, Seth adds these:
What has remained will not remain: They too will quickly disappear. This is the world’s way, although we, Lost to the world, lie sleeping here.
One word is too often profaned For me to profane it, One feeling too falsely disdain’d For thee to disdain it; One hope is too like despair For prudence to smother, And pity from thee more dear Than that from another. I can give what men call love:
But wilt thou accept not The worship the heart lifts above And the Heavens reject not,- The desire of the moth for the star, Of the night for the morrow, The devotion to something afar From the sphere of our sorrow.
When the lamp is shattered, The light in the dust lies dead; When the cloud is scattered, The rainbow’s glory is shed; When the lute is broken, Sweet tones are remembered not; When the lips have spoken, Loved accents are soon forgot. As music and splendor Survive not the lamp and the lute, The heart’s echoes render No song when the spirit is mute:_ No song but sad dirges, Like the wind through a ruined cell, Or the mournful surges That ring the dead seaman’s knell. When hearts have once mingled, Love first leaves the well-built nest; The weak one is singled To endure what it once possessed. O Love! who bewailest The frailty of all things here, Why choose you the frailest For your cradle, your home, and your bier? Its passions will rock thee, As the storms rock the ravens on high; Bright reason will mock thee, Like the sun from a wintry sky. From thy nest every rafter Will rot, and thine eagle home Leave thee naked to laughter, When leaves fall and cold winds come.
Music when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory Odours, when sweet violets sicken, Live within the sense theuy quicken. Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, Are heaped upon the lover’s bed; And so thy thoughts when you are gone, Love itself shall slumber on.
Juvenilia 