Hindu Legend
Mahadur, lord of creation,
That he might become as we,
Enters his sixth incarnation,
Feels our joy and agony.
Making this his humble dwelling,
All that comes to him, he bears;
Deems with human sight and feeling,
Whether he condemns or spares.
As a wayfarer, then, he has looked at the city,
Inspected the great and considered the petty,
And he leaves in the evening, and onward he fares.
On the outskirts of the city,
On his way into the wild,
He has seen a girl, a pretty
Cheek-bepainted lost slave-child.
“Greetings, maiden!” And her answer:
“I am honored. Wait for me.”
“Who are you?” “I am a dancer
For this house of love you see.”
She steps from the threshold, her cymbals are dinning,
Her body a bending slow circle she’s spinning,
And gives him a garland—so graceful is she!
Softly flattering and praising,
She has coaxed him through the door;
“Now our home lamps will be blazing,
Handsome stranger, all the more.
Are you weary? Let me ease you,
Give your sore feet’s care to me;
Have whatever that may please you,
Pleasure, peace, or gaiety.”
She comforts his pains, though they are but a fiction,
The god smiles with pleasure; through deepest corruption
The truth of the human heart he can still see.
He demands her slave-subjection;
She takes on a brighter glow;
Her precocious arts, by action,
Soon become her nature now.
So emerges from the flower
By and by the dulcet fruit;
With obedience’s power,
Love oft follows in pursuit.
To test more severely the one he’s selected,
The knower of heights and of depths has elected
Sweet pleasure, and horror, and pain absolute.
And her rouged cheeks now he kisses,
And she’s caught in love’s birdlime,
And she feels those anguished blisses
And she cries for the first time;
To his feet she sinks, not seeking
Means of lust nor hopes of gain;
Ah! Her slackened limbs are aching,
Will’s commands are all in vain.
*
And over the bed’s oh-so-sweet celebration
The dark hours of night cast their veil of discretion,
So beautifully woven, so homely and plain.
Late it is before she slumbers,
Early wakens from her rest.
Something cold her heart encumbers:
Dead, the well-beloved guest!
Screaming she his corpse embraces,
Nothing can his life reclaim:
His stiff limbs, with solemn paces
Priests bear to a grave of flame.
She hears the priests’ prayers, the funeral dirges,
In madness she runs through the crowd as it surges:
“Why haste to the pyre, love? And what is your name?”
At the bier she now falls, shrieking:
“Give me back my husband dear!—
Even if I must be seeking
In the deepest pit of fear.
Shall those limbs, all grace and splendor,
Fall to ashes, though divine?
But one night of sweet surrender
He was mine, and only mine!”
The priests go on chanting: “We carry the old ones
Who long have been wearying, late become cold ones,
But the young ones we carry gave never a sign.
“Listen to your priests’ instruction:
This is not your husband’s bier.
Dancing is your life’s direction:
No wife-duty claims you here.
Body follows shade, in suttee,
To death’s silent realms that wait;
It’s the wife’s own prize and duty
So to seek her husband’s fate.
“Then echo, you horns, the devout lamentation,
And take now, you gods, day’s own pearl of creation,
And welcome this youth to the flames consecrate.”
Thus the choir has mercilessly
Multiplied her heart’s desire:
She with arms wide, effortlessly
Leaps into the grave of fire.
But the heavenly youth upsoaring
Lifts himself above the pyre,
In his arms her life restoring,
Wafts his darling higher and higher.
Now glad is the god for the sinner’s contrition;
Immortals will lift a lost child from perdition
And bear her to heaven in arms of pure fire.
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