Indias Love Lyrics | Page 9

purple sky.?The dawn is with us once again,?The dawn; which always means good-bye."
Within her little trellised room, beside the palm-fringed sea, She wakeful in the scented gloom, spoke of her youth to me.
Ojira, to Her Lover
I am waiting in the desert, looking out towards the sunset, And counting every moment till we meet.?I am waiting by the marshes and I tremble and I listen?Till the soft sands thrill beneath your coming feet.
Till I see you, tall and slender, standing clear against the skyline A graceful shade across the lingering red,?While your hair the breezes ruffle, turns to silver in the twilight, And makes a fair faint aureole round your head.
Far away towards the sunset I can see a narrow river,?That unwinds itself in red tranquillity;?I can hear its rippled meeting, and the gurgle of its greeting, As it mingles with the loved and long sought sea.
In the purple sky above me showing dark against the starlight, Long wavering flights of homeward birds fly low,?They cry each one to the other, and their weird and wistful calling, Makes most melancholy music as they go.
Oh, my dearest hasten, hasten! It is lonely here. Already Have I heard the jackals' first assembling cry,?And among the purple shadows of the mangroves and the marshes Fitful echoes of their footfalls passing by.
Ah, come soon! my arms are empty, and so weary for your beauty, I am thirsty for the music of your voice.?Come to make the marshes joyous with the sweetness of your presence, Let your nearing feet bid all the sands rejoice!
My hands, my lips are feverish with the longing and the waiting And no softness of the twilight soothes their heat,?Till I see your radiant eyes, shining stars beneath the starlight, Till I kiss the slender coolness of your feet.
Ah, loveliest, most reluctant, when you lay yourself beside me All the planets reel around me--fade away,?And the sands grow dim, uncertain,--I stretch out my hands towards you While I try to speak but know not what I say!
I am faint with love and longing, and my burning eyes are gazing Where the furtive Jackals wage their famished strife,?Oh, your shadow on the mangroves! and your step upon the sandhills,-- This is the loveliest evening of my Life!
Thoughts: Mahomed Akram
If some day this body of mine were burned?(It found no favour alas! with you)?And the ashes scattered abroad, unurned,?Would Love die also, would Thought die too?
But who can answer, or who can trust,?No dreams would harry the windblown dust?
Were I laid away in the furrows deep?Secure from jackal and passing plough,?Would your eyes not follow me still through sleep?Torment me then as they torture now?
Would you ever have loved me, Golden Eyes,?Had I done aught better or otherwise?
Was I overspeechful, or did you yearn?When I sat silent, for songs or speech??Ah, Beloved, I had been so apt to learn,?So apt, had you only cared to teach.
But time for silence and song is done,?You wanted nothing, my Golden Sun!
What should you want of a waning star??That drifts in its lonely orbit far?Away from your soft, effulgent light?In outer planes of Eternal night?
Prayer
You are all that is lovely and light,?Aziza whom I adore,?And, waking, after the night,?I am weary with dreams of you.?Every nerve in my heart is tense and sore?As I rise to another morning apart from you.
I dream of your luminous eyes,?Aziza whom I adore!?Of the ruffled silk of your hair,?I dream, and the dreams are lies.?But I love them, knowing no more?Will ever be mine of you?Aziza, my life's despair.
I would burn for a thousand days,?Aziza whom I adore,?Be tortured, slain, in unheard of ways?If you pitied the pain I bore.?You pity! Your bright eyes, fastened on other things,?Are keener to sting my soul, than scorpion stings!
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