 Forward of Sandhya Songs of Twilight. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Anusha Ayyar, Mumbai. Sandhya Songs of Twilight by Dhan Gopal Mukharji. Forward. Like Rajini, perhaps more than, Sandhya is a slender rill that has drawn its music from my Bengali, which has told upon its English structure. This and many other falls of these poems are due to their unyielding adherents to spontaneity. Sandhya came then as Rajini in its own way through the bed of my Bengali, reflecting its sound and sense and trying to echo back its music that descends on all with the fading twilight. Dhan Gopal Mukharji. NB. Since some of these poems were born without endophyte titles, I have refrained from forcing any on them. End of forward. Section 1 of Sandhya Songs of Twilight by Dhan Gopal Mukharji. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Anusha Ayyar, Mumbai. Poems 1 to 7. 1. Symbolism. Tonguelist the bell, loot without a song. It is not night, it is God's dawn. Silence its unending song. Over hearts valley in the soul's night, through pain's window, behold his light on life's height. No prayer now, though death waves roll, fates candle lit, beside it sits the soul, reading eternities scroll. 2. Source of singing. A bruised heart, a wounded soul, a broken loot, that is all. A sad evening and a lone star, then song reddens, sets life's forest afire. 3. With purple shadows, the mist measures the infinite sea, that spreads her wave-raiment in lavender, violet, grey and green, while with thin silver rays, a lone star seeks to sound the deeps. The breeze-winged stire of flight, the mist-threads weave a rose-fringed dusky drapery to cover the bare breasts of the dunes from the moon's languor-heavy eyes. The shadows die in purple silence, fades the one star from the sky, as the dark mist puts out the rose-red moon from its deep. Pale gleams the lighthouse light, no warring waves break the peace of sleep tonight, nor a hungry wind shrieks in pain from the lee. Under her heavy veil of black, a languid sea sluggishly flows to some far land of forsaken dreams. 4. Oh old, oh new! Footnote. Oh old, oh new! is the cry of a puati. For example, a mother's cry to her unborn child. Puati has no precise English synonym. End of footnote. Who are you? Why make me wait from the hour of dew till another sunset? Why do I look for your coming? Listen to the weeping brook that might bring to my lonely shore a word from you. Ah, nothing, not a leaf's tremor. Oh old, oh longed for new! Who are you? I ask. Know not why I seek from day to dusk, without waking or sleep. No sleep, no waking. A dreaming, a longing, not knowing, yet seeking. For your coming, waiting. Oh spring-born, oh autumn-clad. Oh soul's new-mourn. Oh old, oh glad. So glad, so young. Oh unseen, unknown. Oh fugitive vision. Oh eternal moon in my heart. Oh tearful soul of laughter. Untouched, unhurt. Oh sweet, oh bitter. My born yet unborn, shadow not fallen. Oh undawning mourn. Oh message unbroken. Why, how, when? I wait, wait for you. Oh embrace of earth and heaven. Oh old, oh new. Five. The far away called her, a pilgrim on the hope-lit bark of youth. A woman, a child, a soul on an agacy for the lands of south. It called her in her dreams. Her waking into a deeper dream grew. The flute of the distant played ceaselessly the music of the new. With words of fire it called her, beyond the borne of her days, to a silent sea of joy, washed by unending twilight rays. It called her at dawn when night shed the star jewels from her hair. It called her at sunset when the moon mutely ascended the heavens' stair. It called her without seizing, hour after hour, but a calling, till, come, come, come, at her soul's door kept repeating, come, come, come. In her word, her music, her song, far away, near, far again, heedless of nightfall and dawn. It called, it cried, it prayed, till she, the deity, made answer through youth, through age, through death, to her own far away's receding star. Six. Lassitude. Ah, to be able to sing, to sorrow in melody, to string with silver, sorrows, dark harp, or mount every thorn crowning life's brow with lustrous stars, those tears of the sky, rolling down its face when night's hand puts darkness's crown on its head as twilight dies. None of these for my soul, only to weep is given to me, to nourish my heart's crop for the sight of barrenness to reap. Seven. Ah, pale cool lips that burn, body that yields, though unyielding. Oh, moon with the heat of the sun, flashing out a million lights, to cleave into nothing the endless firmament of my being. Take all, my soul's mistress, heart's queen, the flaming fancies of my dream-tortured night, the intoxicating fruits of my daydream, the fiery lotus of my senses delight that rises from the abyss of my life. The abysmal heaven of love and living now bruised, burnt, torn and thrown to the winds of thy ravishing rejoicing, whose inarticulate words of delight and moan make the ever-yielding music of my soul. End of Section 1. Section 2 of Sandhya, Songs of Twilight by Dhan Gopal Mukherjee This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Anusha Ayer, Mumbai. Poems 8 to 15. 8. Forlorn In the star-blood hours of the night, when the cloud dams stay the flow of winds, not even the shadow of a meteor moves, as in the watchtower of love I sit. Through the casement of hope look for thy coming, along the moss-grown path of stones. Those agonies that time has built on my soul by the unfathomable lake of my tears shed, when even prayers had failed to bring thy returning. Come, destroyer of my peace and sleep, plunderer of lights of my days, enigma on the scroll of my fate, before the lightnings fired my tower, and thunders crashed in my life's sky. Only send the echo of thy footfalls, the ring of thy song and a star, reflection of thy smile, those million suns in the formament of my dawn. 9. After a Bengali song In the forest of my being, the voice of your loot, in the depth of my heart, the pearl of your tear, in the temple of my soul chimes the bell of your love. The fire of dawn, shadow of Eve, life's sorrow and death's mute enchanting peace steal away silently, fearfully, at thy flute's music. O frail faint call which I seek to echo! O breath of love laden with the aroma of my soul! Why seek I ever without? O guest at my door! 10. Moonrise A soft light mantle of rose wear the brown hills as they look down on the valley where the rills spin their long silver embroideries for the fringe of spring's greenered draperies. The cloudbanks recede with the fading breeze. The wobblers fall into silence in the trees to listen to many coloured dream melodies that the mute stars make on sleep's endless seas. The last light flickers out of the sky, shadows with golden feet over the green valley high. The silver rills trill like wobblers from earth's deeps as the moon, the sun of another dawn, heavenward leaps. 11. Adventura, California The moon rises and washes the brine with silver. The dunes like white elephants restfully asleep after the chase, and the fog comes to bring the moon its veil of shades. The waves stretch their phosphorescent arms to embrace the night. The wind like a wounded gull beats its wings over the land, over the sea, into the fog-vested intangibility. Like a thousand trumpets, the breakers proclaim the empire of night. The rocky caverns send back echoes like homage from vassals near and far. A faint cry seameth to flash like lightning through the clouds of the roar of waves. It is not from the rocks, nor from the sea. Ah! It is the prayer of a mighty ocean. 12. The same air that you breathe is the air that caresses my sky. The sunlight that lingers on your hair and lips sets fire to the pathway of my life. And the call of nature's numberless birds butt reflects in world's mirror the music of our hearts singing. Melody made of sweet agonies, exquisite joys poured from pictures of pain as this summer's heat from the ever-burning heart of heaven. Not heaven alone. The earth, the air, flowers and leaves filled with passion that knows no slaking, yet tranquil like sleeps dream below the sea. More than dream below the sea, this love that I bring, its boisterous waves seek the firmament of your yielding while your heartbeats' arrows seek to slay my heart a beating. As I inhale the fragrance of your breath and hair and pour the perfume of my soul on your sun-bathed feet. 13. Why this return? Why this sunlight when all seemed without sun? Whence this call? I cannot tell, yet its mighty thralls hold me, haunt me hour after hour with its name of thee. All seems ended, the last light lost in the house of the dead. Yet with time's tide rises thy face, my heart, my soul, my bride. Though porous the rain and sorrow clouds my sky, yet not mine the pain. What I hear I cannot tell, and what I fear will not endure. But thou returnest, o serene, o silent, o pure. 14. By the verge of the woodland where pearling brooks loosen their brown tresses, where the music of the breeze is played on veils of the vines and trees, thy soft words I hear like songs from enchantments' strings. Ah, vanishing moments of ecstasy, far fleeing only to be nearer to my soul. Rest, rest a while on the hillside of my echoing. Pour on it the sweet rain of thy words melody, till they mingle and drown my tears into thy kisses, passion swept sea. 15. The dream of his soul The dream of his soul in flesh and blood, not to possess, but only to see, was given him for an hour. Ah, fool, he lingered longer. The dream died like the shadow of a star. End of Section 2 Section 3 of Sandhya Songs of Twilight by Dhan Gopal Mukherjee This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Bombs 16 to 22 16. The Eurasian Indignity your part today, suffering the garden of the gods. No country to claim your own, nowhere to lay your head. The ocean of ignorance separates us. The snowstorm of commerce blinds the eye. Yet you must stand true. Bridge of blood and flesh between the West and East in ages to come when man will love his brother irrespective of birth and breed. In the pantheon of the future, yours the immortal seat. Son of man, you are brother, bearer of the cross of God, your destiny the lodestar of our epoch, your life, our rude littered road of the Lord. Arise, awake, halt not till the goal is reached. Raise high the host of freedom, bled the trumpet of light. Suffer you for the world to rejoice. Die so they can live. Live that you may bring the light to the meeting place of the West and East. 17. In the perfumed shrine of love where burns memories exhaustless incense from the iridescent durable of hope on the altar and couch of my heart, rest thy limbs, oh God of my soul. Drink of the unquenchable draught of caresses, tear the flowers of my dreams and fancies, scatter the sacred petals of my passion to the forewinds of thy rejoicing, thy rejoicing that one festival of the high gods, where no offering that I bring ever be too dear, where no soul burnt in the fire of senses can perish, where no suffering fails to be mother and daughter of joy. Take all great God among these gods, the pearl of my woman soul buried in deeps of passion, the coral wreath from the ocean of my bleeding heart and dravish with exquisite merciless touch the one star in my heaven that has led thee hither. My life's eternity in this worship of an hour. 18. The infirm beggar sings broken and bruised by the hand of fate, dark night my staff leaning on its shadowy strength I walk toward thee, my God, thy crescent, my ever-present friend, thy wind, thy voice calls me to go on without end to thy star that my soul had seen. The hour is black, my road unbuilt, my beggar's song I cannot sing, yet thou knowest, for thy love I long. I come, O Lord, broken and battered, to thy world where sorrow is not. 19. Kiss my love, kiss my burning, breaking being. So when cold death will put out the light in some wilderness of far forsaken life, might each kiss blossom into a lotus and a shifali, and in the desolate hours of loneliness, of travelling in the dusk of despair. One petal of these will cheer the vagrant souls that tread the pathway of love's forsaking, or when death will sow the soul of mine on the lake shore of sorrow. Like a weeping willow I will spring, and with my green tresses and bending body shall shelter secrecy-seeking lovers that love for an hour is our twin hearts today. Kiss then, with kisses of flame, touch me with rosy caresses, bury this my hope, my dream, and thy all-conquering love me, so the kiss flowers may each be a dream. May my willow be the vision of eternal spring. 20. Color harmonies, violet hills, rosy mist, limpid pool, golden notes from sunset's loot, for shadows draped in green with purple feet to dance and swim through iridescent undulating's dusk descends, mauve cloudlets, dying butterflies flit and fly and die in the opalescent ocean of mist that grows dark and still. Kisses away the last gold from the brow of the hills till the coral crescent with its wand of grease makes silver triple music on the pool's shadow laden deeps. 21. Sanatan, the absolute. Footnote. The word absolute is the synonym for the Sanskrit word sanatan, meaning eternal and immutable truth. End of footnote. Our hopes that fail are but truths that set to illumine other spirits on their pathway. As our joys that come true are their far-off dreams, that through the cadence of our life ring out their pent-up tunes, whatever dies needs must live, whatever breeds doth die too. But above death and life shines that highlight, where all find rest yet endlessly move. 22. Coming off the fog, killing the light, blurring the stars, marring the breeze, nature's many-strained harp, it comes silently, sinisterly, over the land, over the sea, spreading its beggar raiment of brown, without stop, without sound, over the valley, like a great serpent of silence coiling around the heart of sound. A damp insidiousness creeps into the night, a drab numbness sets in, dripping in eugubrious drops from the haggard fingers of the autumn trees. It strangles the last sound, it devours the last light, trembles in fear to see its own visage. It moves on, on and around, ceaselessly, untiringly, till the black night is drowned in an abyss of brown. End of Section 3. Section 4 of Sandhya, Songs of Twilight, by Don Gopal Mukherjee. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Josh Kibbe. 23. In love's afterglow, full of stars, those lilies of the river of night, sing no song, dear, speak no word. The white noontide is ebbed into gold, shores breaking seas cease to roar, low the moonrise of our soul. Hardly a kiss or the shadow of a caress, no decking the hour with the jasmines of touch, but a rose-pedal shivering in exquisite agony? Our love. The weary sunset is grown wearier, a vague lassitude encircles this twain, as separation builds its pathway of tears. Sea sweeping, yet the saffron-like lingers, the stars throb in nebulous luster, as our hearts to the music of desire. What matters of winter benign, we sing summer to sleep and autumn on its bed of leaves. Now comes the hour of parting for us, as the last light flickers and fades, even loves afterglow dying, and is dead. Alas, thou art gone, as are the hours of day, the hard, gym-burning stars do not set. Oh, in what dark and what forced roamedst thou? Twenty-four. The end. Art thou about me amid falling leaves and dotoms circling winds, when the golden shadows grow russet and rosy, and the purple sunset sets fire to the sky? Art thou the breath that burns my bean when cold feel my limbs in terror and awe? Who art thou, my love? Stranger in a strange garb, far and farther to be nearer to my heart. Why make spring flames leap from passions' autumn leaves? Why this urge through fatigue when time falls fast asleep under the shadow of its grave? The winter ice? Yet, and yet the circling winds repeat passionate speech. The sunset burns as my soul and desires golden heat. The night be not far, shadows creep near, with chilling breath and clutching hands to pluck, to destroy, the flowers of yielding from your heart, powerless, fear-stricken. I tremble, I stagger, I fall into oblivion's pit, as time creeps into winter's grave, silent, empty, white. Twenty-five. The Confluence. Tears of ages come in a stream, sighs flow in from life's hoary height, souls of sorrow bring their gleam, of a light that is but a moan, not a sight. The gray waves of the sea of death congeal under the cold sun of suffering, while time, playing the flute of fate, charms them snake-like and doth bring. Out of a cave beyond lights and shades, present storm, made stormier by future's promises, to mingle in the ocean of death, like sleep yielding to dreams caresses. Twenty-six. In the deeps of dream, or the pools of sleep, a lone star her face seeking, with song-kindled eyes, her isle of rest. Across the dusky hills, the first flesh of waking unfurls its silver banner, to signal the isle for her. She vanishes as before into the fading night. Thus the eye of life searches for the home of peace, night after night. And when the sun of death rises, it flees. It loves its own night. Twenty-seven. To Leo B. Meehan. Few notes out of the coffer of sound, an image from the gallery of nature, an hour from the infinity of time. Out of these blessed creature, createst thou the world of endless rhyme. Twenty-eight. Chopin's Funeral March. The keyboard black and white, shadow-light the evening scale, have silent the voice of thy singing. Quiver the notes in pain, exquisite, sad the melody at thy touch, like the silver arrow of desire piercing the soul's golden heart. The room is lost and dark, the ivory keys white fringe of a music long since mute, yet in the black night tremble and toss notes unheard, undrimped, like sleep sleepless, and waking full of smart. Twenty-nine. In the golden afterglow you lay, when the emerald moon made thin silver fog veils for the bride of night, whose saffron-sandaled feet walked the foam-strewn floor of the sea. In my arms you listen to words of love, poured by the infinite heaven of my heart, echoed by the endless symphony of the sky. Your silent gaze, deeper than the song of the sea, farther than the moon, nearer than your own heartbeat, asked mine for speech. What can my love say at this sad sacred hour? Hour of parting this. Love's ever-feared moment, longing's much-dreaded end, yet no voice sorrows in our being, no woe dims the moon-face tonight. Between the sheltering dunes and fading light on an aerial couch-line, adorned in kiss-swoven garments of nudity, our spirits garlanded with myriad embraces, born on passion's flaming wings, crossed this ocean of parting, and to that far island of Scythera where only love reigns in eternal majesty. Recording by Bruska Chuck This life's height, the sight of his mind, and his imagination, expansive as the sea, tries to push the boundary line of the sky, his soul further and further, where a new north star awaits his exploring eye. 31. After hearing my old Kentucky home. I know not whose the words, nor the maker of their music. In my sorrow-laden heart the aroma of its pathetic heart like the soothing breath of dream. Joy borrows its charm from sorrow. Sorrow feverish with the color of joy. An opaque crystal, a stone-on-life string made of music that doth ring as the stars on the lyre of night. A pain it is made perfect, a call made clear by the voice of peace, a silver stream of song darkened yet floweth on and on between black banks of memory into the soul's white home. 32. The coming of the time. 33. The tide of night. Pale this twilight phase, shade ridden the horizon light, the forest a green gold vision of grace in its frame of lavender mist. No rose-leaf washed in moonlight, no vine on vermillion walls, pale sunlight fading into night, dark tunes the music of the hour. No death nor life is ours here, but the vast vague sea of black sounded by star mariners seeking the infinite's track. 33. Dead love. Pour no blood on Ash's brother. That is not the way. Better say nothing. Blood is no life-giver. It makes death look so gay. Dead life or dead love need no blood at all. No trumpet's call can bring back what you lived and strove the Ash's no thrall. Why cry for a colored glass that for jewel you took? The magic, the dream, all returning to dust and grass. Not a day, love your soul forsook. At last you have known it that is more than they do. Be not afraid, oh friend, alone, alas, alone, you have loved and lived it. Pour no blood on the Ash's, for blood cannot turn into dew. 34. It is the same twilight dear, the hour of love and tear, when in raiments of shadows, fancies, fears, hopes, and sorrows tread the path of sunset, while like barks of jet float the clouds from east to west. I think of thee, my darling, as in my heart strange chords bring out melodies of many memories and half-forgotten reveries telling of this or that scene that is and has been trod by thee, queen of queens. My dreams of thee are ceaseless as my love of thee is endless, whether it be sunset or sunrise, hour of star song or bird cries, it is of thee that I dream in the heart of my soul's stream that flows to thy feet, my darling. Dark grows both east and west, flower heads droop into rest as I seek to lay my heart and loving on thy star-white breast, my darling, and sink into that pool of sleep that rises from thy singings deep while all are silent as my desires near thee, my queen. What peace thy presence breathes, what serenity weaves its reeds, what myriad wonders touch hands across many seas from many lands when a thought of thee heralds thy coming to me between palpitating desires and fragrant dreams. Thirty-five, weariness, weariness the tune of this evening melody, pain the lute to which I sing. Ah, goddess, why this grey measure in thy starry harmony? The white conch of the half-moon, silent as though all worships ceased, no incense perfume from the forest censor the breeze brings, all still like torrid noon. I row in a black bark on a copper-colored sea. The sun fades like a golden bubble in its deep, weariness the chart that I hold in my hand, weariness the tune of this evening melody. Thirty-six, a call, not a song, a command, not a prayer, no mellowing moonlight but dawn, frail, fanciful, and fair in the east of my dream and desire. At the portal of unending desire, draped in diaphanous dreams with a whispered word of fire that quivers and gleams through the clouds of my longing, longings poignant with pains and tears enfold and fill my soul that aches with hopes and fears as thy chariot-wheels roll sets fire with torches of gold to my words, my silences, my singing, and to this black pyre of my life to take my being on the wings of thy embracing to sail away, far away from man's hate and strife, where only love reigns on its throne of unending light. End of section five. Gently descending dark, curtain of silence from heaven to earth, the drama of day over, empty the seats of life, dead the twilight fire, curtains of black woven from threads of purple by the hands of a star, that lone soul weeping over the dead hours laid by mute time in the eternal's grave, in the night of my soul, not even a ray nor a mourner present, but a deep dark hollow where no fate weeps, even fear is afraid to tread, fear forsaken, hollow within hollow, even silence flees from me. Oh, the pity of it. Thirty-eight. Poet. To distill a few golden drops of song through the gloom of this hour to filter true emotions through passions burning fire. When the sun bubble-like fades in the west, as our being craves for night's rest, that pool of silver in life's forest of distress. To light some pale candles in the cavern of a lonely isle, and draw the wine of day from the must of midnight, or plant a star seed in the grey-plowed eve, so out of the abyss of the blackness of night, dawn's million-colored fountain might spring. Thirty-nine. Wanderer. The silvery beach, a ribboned around the flowing hair of the sea, where gleam the foam flowers garlanded in multitudinous nebulous rings. Here, on the frontier of many worlds and the billow-rocked cradle of eternal sleep. No sound, no music, no silence that a wounded soul can heal. A longing more tempestuous than the craven breeze possessed deep, and tears that outweigh the salt of the woeful brine, yet no sleep dream-robbed, or dream-laden, nor even death's pallid peace. But a ceaseless crying over my heart's forsaken valleys, where love like a wraith haunts the empty tombs of memory. Forty. At dawn. With the breath of dawn, cooling thy feverish brow, and the fading of the last footfall of the stars, no kiss can I bring to thy bedside, nor caresses of cooling fire, my sweet. Yet through this dreamful silence that writes on the rim of the golden light, the story of our love with most eloquent poignancy, more love we pour into each other than the trice of an eternal night. Forty-one. From her many-colored bow, nature has hurled her silver arrows of rain and slain the hosts of dark. Jeweled with a single star, the moon walks the garden of night higher and higher through the star-enflowered pathways of sapphire. She draws her train of silver. Forty-two. If words fail, song will come. If thought fades, souls will not be dumb. If sound ceases, silence our song. If life fails, death join our hands. Forty-three. Rainy night. Like tears shed over a dream, like sighs that stream, in an unseen nameless way, into the heart of our lay. It seemed hour on hours, years like fading flowers, scattered their petals and bloom, in a half-lit forest of gloom. The softness of its sounds, like the coursing of a million hounds, of dream over the glade of sleep, where tortured silences creep. Exquisite, pain laden, peaceful, this night most beautiful. What love forsaken by loving sets his heart a-singing. No torment in it, but tenderness, a liquid-star music of sadness, pours into my soul half asleep, while the willows at my window weep. End of section six. Section seven of Sanja. Songs of Twilight by Don Gopal Mukherjee. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Bruce Kachuk. Forty-four. Ghosts. Flames flickered in the fireplace as memories on the hearth of life. Two shadows wee, watching, brooding, to catch our reflection in a non-existent stream. The ghost witness of it all, the clock brings its proofs. Moments melt into moments like notes of sad music, like a white sediment. Cold memories shroud our life. Speech flees before this. Faces turn away from each other. The fire throws light on them. There, too, flames burn and flicker. Forty-five. Rain. What world agony distills its poignancy this day. What pain laid in heart pours out its exhaustous lay of tormenting woe and tortured silences. From the far reaches of the marshland, along and beyond the crescent bed of the sea sand, what tempest on the wave strings makes its cadences. The distant hills dimmed like dull and forgotten dreams raise their shadowy heads, where pouring streams, the tears of the heart-hollowed mourners of the skies, while into the turgid heart of the fens at their feet turbidly fall and dance, sheet upon sheet to the measureless measure of the wind's empty size. No light but a dismal gray that neither throbs nor quivers on the torn banks of the heaven's cloud rivers, but stonely stands still like death that dies never. Not dead but a weeping world bathing its corpses, its memories, its lost hopes, in regret's herces to be buried in flowerless graves, without incense or prayer. It rides in agony, rolls out in undulating rills this rain melody from the sea waves to the farthest hills, thence to the dreary distance lost to hearing or sight. It is all dark and dank, a morning of earth and heaven, sorrow laden, life weary, long lost, death craven, a day lost to time, a light more baleful than night. No dead these but a living death seeking peace from the furies, their own thoughts sorrow surcease, kissing the lashing wind, thinking it to be the breeze. Poor, poor, poor, a relentless, exhaustless pain to the measure of thine own agony, thy woes refrain, these desolate streams of thy music, thy pangs of a million seas. 46. Evening Worship The amber west melts into saffron, the east a misty vision of rose, like the sun our souls seek repose, the mountains and purpled priests, the river the chant from their lips, sunlit the pine candles crimson tips. At this hour of worship shadows spread their wings, silently the breeze bell rings, the stars put a silver ribbon round night's tresses, the light fades like a receding song as fall soundless sounds from nature's moon gong. 47. The rosy mist stillly polishes the round mirror, the moon golden her face, reflecting the cool sweet glory of a baby son when dangling his short golden arms in the cradle of the sky after night gave him birth and herself died as day dies to see the moon, this golden rose-washed stone that the unseen hand puts on the crown of night beside it puts bits of white, the star jewels like million fancies worshipping the goddess of dream. 48. The sun's golden spear, the violet cloud writhing in pain, golden the tent of the sky, the tall trees wave their green gold hair. Music of this hour, the zephyr's perfume laden hargassie drifts with the song of lutes the sunset stream that falls from heaven's bower. Another flow of light, tinkling like the intangible bells of paradise, flows out of my heart into the mysterious love-perfumed ocean of night. 49. Truth a field of battle the sky, the sun, the hero bleeding to death, the shadows and lights hurl their hosts of clouds ceaselessly. No peace, warfare all. Nay, lo, she cometh, the spirit of truth, the evening star. 50. A Parallel time has passed since shadows trembled to watch twilight sweep the earth for the phantoms to trip and mince. A dark breeze, the forest heart stirs, yet marry the face of the sky, twinkling in joy its innumerable eyes, the stars, hushed the music within. Pleasures silver laugh, dead, thought lost in reverie, reverie receding into nothing. The taper of dreams flickers out, leaving the soul in dusk by the altar of love, flower laden as the night with stars. End of Section 7 Section 8 of Sanja Songs of Twilight by Don Gopal Mukherjee This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Bruce Gachuk 51. Nothing endures, you said, none can die, both love. In the firmament of loving, no stars set, no meteors fall. Yet nothing endures, nothing, not but dust, not but regret and vain desire, the twin monuments of life reared by time, by wrecking all that we seek and find. Its relentless waves of years even the impregnable wall of memory that thought builds on the embankment of hope. Pass all away, even we who loved, dreamt as non-dreamt before, born by the tide of life. But lo, from our defeated destiny, rise our seeds, reared by time, consecrated to love and living. 52. Disappointment. They think thee bitter, thou art not made a laughter, nor love's smile can thy vision beguile. Like a black fiery comet, suddenly, sinisterly, thou comest, making thy fateful journey, littering the floor of destiny with wreckages of life, of love, of heart, of all visitors, thou art the surest, halting nowhere long, endlessly passest, dragging behind thee thy train of fire that burneth all, heedless of curse or prayer. 53. Buddha, on thy lotus seat of night, meditation closing thy eyes, the star-hosts, thy awestruck devotees, the moon, thy halo unchanging, white-robed time telling his beads of eons on the thread of eternity, by the ocean of space, slumbering in peace at thy feet, while destiny, stringing the lyre of death, sings Nirvana's hymn. 54. Ask me not to stand at thy friendship's gate. I, who loved thee, now must like a cold specter from a far-forgotten land of snow, watch thee fall asleep on the couch of freezing friendship. And these arms thou sought and joy'd on many delights excavated the ruins of passion to build them anew, or sailed on thy wings these arms over love's enchanted sea. Friendship, barrier not this, but a coward's refuge, a shadow, rainbow light of loving and life. O come, my pilot, conduct the bark of our twin souls from cold friendship's haven over love's boisterous desire-foam-fringed ocean, till in the sheer joy and fatigue of flying we fail, fall, and fade into the heart of passions wither fire-born day. 55. Golden vines they, these thin lines of light, climbing the sky-wall, after the sun sank into sleep, like rills thread-like, seen from a jutting rock where air is dizzy and fancy infinite free. What fiery wine tingles in these vines, weaving golden arabesques on the pale evening sky. Ah, the heavens this hour have drunk of sunsets ruby wine for those golden cobwebs to weave their magic of twilight dreams. 56. At sundown two shadows fell, tremulous and frail, from the upland over the lake surface pale, while the shivering reeds shook at sunset as the swans sailed into a sea of jet. The rippling waters and the breeze and the shadows that fall from the trees mingled and melted with the twain, a song of white washed away by its black refrain. Only words remained, palpitating and few, falling through the gloom and night's dew, like jeweled fancies rising out of a dream that live for a moment and die ere they gleam. 57. Tears well out from my heart as clouds overcast my soul and blur my vision of thee. Melancholy this dawn when thy smile and words and thy sky-shaming eyes are not beside me to rouse me from sleep, though cry I without end, yet a thought of thee heals many wounds. Why, thou ask me, how can I tell? All thou wish to take is thine, not even the dust of thy feet I seek. Only leave me the star of thy memory to bathe in the rain of my weeping. End of Section 8. Section 9. Of Sandia Songs of Twilight This Librivox recording is in the public domain, recording by Peter Yearsley. 58. At last thou comest, thy footsteps I hear across the ages, over wandering fancies, through shadows of dreams is thy coming queen of queens, this shimmering summer of life, that thou bringest with thee as a gift to my silent waiting, is but what I prayed to bring to the altar of thy coming. I spread the seat of my soul for thee to rest thy tired limbs, and waved the fan of my heart to call thy lotus-shaming face, Lady of Light, Queen of Grace. Come to my bower of worship, where burns the incense of devotion, lay thy rose-robed body in the shrine of my longing, where love's rainbow songs are ringing. 59. The lingering light of the sun takes from the chalice of the valley its mist perfume to wash the moon-face with rose. In the pool at my feet the goldfishes drag their trains of brown, which cleave it into part that ceaselessly mingle anew. The moon, silver-bright, through thousand streams sends her light into the valley a swoon, listening to the harmony of night. 60. I have drunk your tears with insatiate lips. I have broken like a toy the heart of your life. What have I given? Your last query. The cup of my heart filled I with love, the chalice of soul, with the substance of my God, for thee to drink my life's first love. Thou drankest as one that comes from a desert. Thou spiltest the nectar heedless, like mad. Yet I cursed not, nor shed tears, but loved thee, longed to live for thy love. Alas, thy tears grew salt, thy love, thy self's greedy grasp. Oh, it is the end. Let us part. The morning of indifference wings the grey sky, the birdsong of the other dawns, the ravens shriek now. Shed no more tears. I tire of my drink. Break not thy heart, thy soul, let it be still. Beyond the grey cloud is the land of sunrise. Let us part, dear. 61. Sound Butterflies in a Fountain Like interpenetrating bells of silver, the water drops, ring and melt into new drops, like new notes, from an untiring lyre that, in coloured succession, paint our heartbeats from the gold of sunrise into sunset fire. Yet, not like that, this brush of water drops limbs on the silver rim of joy, the dark butterflies of desire. 62. Even in sadness, thou art beside me, in gladness none so happy as thee, I love thee. May my love kiss the feet of thy love of me. My dreams are thine, day or night. My sleep sings in silence to the night of thy delight. May thy heart's gifts, like stars my heart's heaven bedight. Though a sigh rises in my soul this hour, closes its petals in the west, the golden day-flower, in my bower, let thy love pour its rainbow-shower. 63. By the sea of sleep walks white-robed night, the breeze but the faint rustle of her drapery, that calls the mist-made bark of dream from the cavern of the unknown to sail to us, laden with endless, star-like fancies, and she, the magician, walks on and on over the sapphire embankment of the sky, like a moving magnet drawing behind her a million dream-argesies. 64. Farewell, after a Hindustani song. Farewell, fairest of loves, life's most fanciful of gifts, joy and treasure, love and wonder, waking's elusive reality, dreams ever-yielding divinity. Even thou must pass beyond time's starless bar. Thy eyes, their lambent flames, shall no more illumine my night, nor thy brow, home of many moods, tranquil yet tormented as a sea, shall ever wear the coronal of my kiss. Ah, kisses, brisses of fire, passion's long-lingering melody, played by thy lips on mine, even they must die. Intangible realities of rapture, ever-present wonders of desire, now, like autumn leaves, fly with the west wind of fear. No, not fear that takes thee from me, nor love's slayer, satiety, yet art gone, thou art going. Oh, not to crush thy heart on mine, thy breasts made but for my hands, no more to quiver in rapture therein. Who wills this cruel decree, the warmth of thy body, the staggering storm of thy yielding, the intoxicating perfume of thy mouth, these and many other endless vials and loots of passion, love, life, delights of a thousand heavens? Who robs them of me? Fate, that fool in the court of love, who hath no wit for laughter, steals it all from me, in the mid-hour of life, and as it befits his mind, scatters it all over the turbid streams of fear and lies. Recording by Bruska Chuck 65 Satiety All thy gifts must die, all thy thoughts must fail, such were the decree writ by time, with shadows on the scroll of fate, even thy memory recedes into forgetting, thy lustrous words star-like set. Ah, sweet! Autumn's breath withers all, even the west wind fears to tread, all yield to the power of relentless time that no love nor passion can stay, blown like dried leaves we now, on the granite pavement of fate. No more thy lip touch on my brow, nor thy hands pleading caresses, thy gifts fall and fade into nothing, thy vision grows dim in life's sunset west. 66 Drowsy the noonday air, under the trees the still shadow, like a fugitive fragment of night, seeks shelter from the sun. The bird has ceased singing, the beggar unable to bear the wealth of the sun spreads his torn garment to find peace in the benign shadow of sleep. Ah, lone soul like him, I spread this rag of my song, under the tree of life, over which blazes the sun of fate, the calm of its shadow protects me, but where my peace? 67 Chatterton For summer's seventeen this flower of spring-scattered fragrance that dwelt in its petals, seventeen, seventeen song-gowers, a heart never weary, a soul with honey of all flowers, a song as enchanting as stars, a boy never grown old, a lute never tiring to sing, a mind near chilled, though hunger's hand lay cold, steely cold on his breast, yet the boy sang, loved as alone a poet can, endlessly, without rest. Just seventeen, near old, though time passes, a golden lyre-string has not yet ceased ringing, rings through the heart of time, o'er the summit of death, to the music of the nine, into the heart of eternal rhyme. 68 A summer song it was, counting of many unseen stars in an intangible sky, making new, milky ways, silver shadow-paths that lead from sapphire abysses into deeper abysses still, the deeps of our souls, lit by passions burning flowers, tremulous, timorous flames of silver, that with thousand hands our hearts sought to pluck and scatter, or make barbet garlands for love's nuptial hour, nuptial hour, briefer than a moment, longer than heaven's eternal summer, when each flower burns to soothe, and each soothing petal burns anew, till myriad streams of fire, strewn with countless flaming stars, bear us to the far sea of time, where no summer dies, nor endure the stinging moments of love's winter. 69 Who knows? Time's torment, life's woes, and sorrow's won gaze are but shades in a picture of light where nothing abides, all things fade. In fading there is beauty, by shedding tears we bathe our hearts, those crushed flowers full of smart, for a deity not far from our souls, yet no solace in prayer. Pain has no largesse, dark has stars, but no barren earth its flowers, all are dismal and fallow, yet from the mountain's stony heart spring multitudinous rivers sparkling at dawn and deepening night's gloom with mysterious murmurs. And who knows? These streams that pass by the balcony of our past, through present's wilderness, into desolate future, may reach the land of the farthest star. Who knows? Ah! Who knows? May these song-rills from my heart's little hill empty their singing waters into a sea of song-making where nothing endures but the sound and echo of singing. Where sound and echo are one, a moon-set veil of sunset land where light is wedded to shade, without death full of dying, yet not dead. Seventy. The First Vision. The impenetrable dark, darkness of cloud and night, coming on black, silent wings surround me in their folds as it sits by my side on the shore of time. No fear, no sorrow, no hope, not even the footfall of a star. Dim, deep, sable tones rise from the organ of nothing with its flats and sharps of clouds and night. Ripples of moments, waves of hours and years break on the shore of space to speak vague, soundless words to my soul alone, shade among shades. Not even the unheard whisper of the shadow of a breeze, but silence ponderous, peaceful, afraid of its own self, a mute hound at my feet. Who art thou? Whom do I know in this emptiness? Who has lived with me and called me from the deeps of time? Receives the bank of space, fades away, even the unfilled time, no light, no sound, not even a dream. Yet who speaks through silence, who plays this music of night like an intangible river it flows with waves of shadow sound between banks of mountainous silence? Oh, who, who are you? Light in a world of shadows, rainbow among sunless clouds, bark of song on the sea of silence. Oh, ferryman of the soul, oh, word on infinite scroll. 71. Shanti. Sleep shadows, sleep light, sleep tune, sleep speech, sleep night, sleep day, sleep children in the cradle of rest. Dream stars, dream moon, dream sea, dream oh sun, dream rainbow, dream storm, dream rain, oh milk from heaven's breast. Rest ye feet, rest ye hands, rest bleeding hours of even. Rest, oh heart, torn and burnt. Rest, my fancies, day is done. Sleep night, sleep with star eyes closed. Sleep sorrow in death's silent repose. Sleep, oh soul, be it twilight or morn. Sleep thou to, oh sleep, heedless of moon and sun. End of section 10. End of Sanger, Songs of Twilight by Don Gopal Mukherjee.