Indias Love Lyrics | Page 7

moment's bliss?In some dark desert den,?When, with your amber eyes alight?With iridescent flame,?And fierce desire for love's delight,?Towards my lair you came
Ah laughing, ever-brilliant eyes,?These things men may not know,?But something in your radiance lies,?That, centuries ago,?Lit up my life in one wild blaze?Of infinite desire?To revel in your golden rays,?Or in your light expire.
If this, oh Strange Ringed Eyes, be true,?That through all changing lives?This longing love I have for you?Eternally survives,?May I not sometimes dare to dream?In some far time to be?Your softly golden eyes may gleam?Responsively on me?
Ah gentle, subtly changing eyes,?You smiled on me one day,?And all my life in glad surprise?Leaped up, imploring "Stay!"?Alas, alas, oh Golden Eyes,?So cruel and so gay,?You went to shine in other skies,?Smiled once and passed away.
Kotri, by the River
At Kotri, by the river, when the evening's sun is low,?The waving palm trees quiver, the golden waters glow,?The shining ripples shiver, descending to the sea;?At Kotri, by the river, she used to wait for me.
So young, she was, and slender, so pale with wistful eyes?As luminous and tender as Kotri's twilight skies.?Her face broke into flowers, red flowers at the mouth,?Her voice,--she sang for hours like bulbuls in the south.
We sat beside the water through burning summer days,?And many things I taught her of Life and all its ways?Of Love, man's loveliest duty, of Passion's reckless pain,?Of Youth, whose transient beauty comes once, but not again.
She lay and laughed and listened beside the water's edge.?The glancing rirer glistened and glinted through the sedge. Green parrots flew above her and, as the daylight died,?Her young arms drew her lover more closely to her side.
Oh days so warm and golden! oh nights so cool and still!?When Love would not be holden, and Pleasure had his will.?Days, when in after leisure, content to rest we lay,?Nights, when her lips' soft pressure drained all my life away.
And while we sat together, beneath the Babul trees,?The fragrant, sultry weather cooled by the river breeze,?If passion faltered ever, and left the senses free,?We heard the tireless river decending to the sea.
I know not where she wandered, or went in after days,?Or if her youth she squandered in Love's more doubtful ways. Perhaps, beside the river, she died, still young and fair;?Perchance the grasses quiver above her slumber there.
At Kotri, by the river, maybe I too shall sleep?The sleep that lasts for ever, too deep for dreams; too deep. Maybe among the shingle and sand of floods to be?Her dust and mine may mingle and float away to sea.
Ah Kotri, by the river, when evening's sun is low,?Your faint reflections quiver, your golden ripples glow.?You knew, oh Kotri river, that love which could not last.?For me your palms still shiver with passions of the past.
Farewell
Farewell, Aziz, it was not mine to fold you?Against my heart for any length of days.?I had no loveliness, alas, to hold you,?No siren voice, no charm that lovers praise.
Yet, in the midst of grief and desolation,?Solace I my despairing soul with this:?Once, for my life's eternal consolation,?You lent my lips your loveliness to kiss.
Ah, that one night! I think Love's very essence?Distilled itself from out my joy and pain,?Like tropical trees, whose fervid inflorescence?Glows, gleams, and dies, never to bloom again.
Often I marvel how I met the morning?With living eyes after that night with you,?Ah, how I cursed the wan, white light for dawning,?And mourned the paling stars, as each withdrew!
Yet I, even I, who am less than dust before you,?Less than the lowest lintel of your door,?Was given one breathless midnight, to adore you.?Fate, having granted this, can give no more!
Afridi Love
Since, Oh, Beloved, you are not even faithful?To me, who loved you so, for one short night,?For one brief space of darkness, though my absence?Did but endure until the dawning light;
Since all your beauty--which was mine--you squandered?On that which now lies dead across your door;?See here this knife, made keen and bright to kill you.?You shall not see the sun rise any more.
Lie still! Lie still! In all the empty village?Who is there left to hear or heed your cry??All are gone to labour in the valley,?Who will return before your time to die?
No use to struggle; when I found you sleeping,?I took your hands and bound them to your side,?And both these slender feet, too apt at straying,?Down to the cot on which you lie are tied.
Lie still, Beloved; that dead thing lying yonder,?I hated and I killed, but love is sweet,?And you are more than sweet to me, who love you,?Who decked my eyes with dust from off your feet.
Give me your lips; Ah, lovely and disloyal?Give me yourself again; before you go?Down through the darkness of the Great, Blind Portal,?All of life's best and basest you must know.
Erstwhile Beloved, you were so young and fragile?I held you