Indias Love Lyrics | Page 7

Only last August I drank that water
Because it had chanced to cool
your hands;
When love is over, how little of love
Even the lover
understands!
"Golden Eyes"
Oh Amber Eyes, oh Golden Eyes!
Oh Eyes so softly gay!
Wherein
swift fancies fall and rise,
Grow dark and fade away.
Eyes like a
little limpid pool
That holds a sunset sky,
While on its surface, calm
and cool,
Blue water lilies lie.
Oh Tender Eyes, oh Wistful Eyes,
You smiled on me one day,
And
all my life, in glad surprise,
Leapt up and pleaded "Stay!"
Alas, oh
cruel, starlike eyes,
So grave and yet so gay,
You went to lighten
other skies,
Smiled once and passed away.
Oh, you whom I name "Golden Eyes,"
Perhaps I used to know

Your beauty under other skies
In lives lived long ago.
Perhaps I
rowed with galley slaves,
Whose labour never ceased,
To bring
across Phoenician waves
Your treasure from the East.
Maybe you were an Emperor then
And I a favourite slave;
Some

youth, whom from the lions' den
You vainly tried to save!
Maybe I
reigned, a mighty King,
The early nations knew,
And you were
some slight captive thing,
Some maiden whom I slew.
Perhaps, adrift on desert shores
Beside some shipwrecked prow,
I
gladly gave my life for yours.
Would I might give it now!
Or on
some sacrificial stone
Strange Gods we satisfied,
Perhaps you
stooped and left a throne
To kiss me ere I died.
Perhaps, still further back than this,
In times ere men were men,

You granted me a 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