My paper is awash with tears,
And blotted by the shaken ink,
And my pain-tortured mind forbids
Me write or think.
I knew not once what I know now,
How better far to end this life
At one fell blow, than pine away
A lonely wife.
Beloved! then I did not know:
Do thou forgive my fault confessed!
Oh! love! return and never more
Quit thou this breast!
Too fierce for my faint heart to bear
The flames of this dividing fire!
Oh! for the cool the Sati finds
On her lord’s pyre!
On heels of one unwanted grief
Griefs uninvited tread amain:
The tavern, the high road my heart,
The bridge of pain!
On sorrow’s rack my mind is stretched.
My heart recoined in misery’s mint:
Pain is crowned king and he doth know
Nor ruth nor stint.
To truth revealing night awakes
Hearts cheated by deceiving day:
Sleepless to death I then appeal,
Come thou and stay.
Hour after hour I turn and toss.
Sleep cometh not to me forlorn,
Lacking the opiate of thy kiss
At night, at morn.
With thee thou tookest all my joy,
Leaving me only care and grief:
Day now to me no pleasure brings,
Night no relief.
Thou art the whole of life to me,
And separation from thee death:
Only the memory of thy face
Keeps me in breath.
The message, that I fain would send,
No letters, known to man, can spell:
Thy loving heart alone can read
What mine would tell.
Unto the wise man all is known,
Before the fool has told him aught:
But fools e’en by the wisest sage
Can ne’er be taught.
My heart ne’er bade me take my pen
A fond love letter to indite:
While thou dost live within my breast,
Why should I write?
Let lovers unto lovers write,
Who in far-distant countries roam:
Why should I write to thee who mak’st
My heart thy home?
And when I sought to write to thee
A letter, where my love was shown,
Upon my page was naught set down
But one long moan.
Despite a continent’s expanse,
Despite the ocean’s severing space,
Thy soul and mine defiant hold
Their close embrace.
My heart for thy heart ever longs,
My lips to thy lips ever yearn,
My ears for thy sweet word of wife
On thy return.
My desperate soul leapt to my lips
To follow thee upon thy way.
Deign now to give it thy command
To cross or stay!
From Jeth’s* clear blue down streamed the rain.
Now Sāwan’s* lowering clouds are dry:
Thy absence hath confused the rule
Of year and sky.
To-night I go to greet the moon
And welcome her new shining face:
Ah! double joy! thy eyes and mine
Fixed on one place!*
This letter is a spirit kiss
Of secret charm to banish pain
And quicken hope my lips will soon
Press thine again.
My paper all too little is,
And all too soon I fill it up:
Fool! can love’s ocean be contained
Within a cup?
Worldlings, who yearn for wealth and fame,
Stray quickly from Love’s path aside
And to their wandering footsteps then
Take self for guide.
Though such remonstrate and advise,
They bring no ease to my poor eyes:
’Mid streaming floods they’re thirsty still!
Explain, ye wise!
Below the surface oft I dived
Yet won no pearl from out the sea:
The ocean I do not reproach
But fate and me.
Thy twin reflections once abode
In these delighted eyes of mine,
That now, bereft of all they love,
Unpeopled pine.
In bodies twain our soul is one:
Were mine ablaze upon the pyre,
Soul is the Monarch, though my flesh
Melt in the fire.
And e’en though soul and body both
Sink ’neath the wind-swept seas of pain,
At the mast-head love’s flag defies
The hurricane.
Dry thou the petals of the rose!
More fragrant blows their scented breath!
So bloweth love, that made life sweet,
More sweet in death.