FLOWER of perfection, thou, and perfect flower!
Thou did’st not bring strange far-off Gods to birth!
Thy stem beneath the lake in human earth
Deep-rooted! yet God—given thy rich dower
Of poesy unfolding—sun or shower—
Blooms of pure passion, constancy, grief, mirth,
And truth that lives for what it knows love-worth
And dies ere yield its soul to alien power.Long after thy pavilions crumble down,
When age-forgotten Māndu’s dying fame,
When Rewa’s godhead, desecrate, departs,
Still shall thy songs be sung by sage and clown,
And green, as Mālwa’s monsoon hills, thy name
Live on her children’s tongues and in their hearts.