Only he knows the bitterness of love
Who has deeply felt its pangs.
When you are in trouble
No one comes near you:
When fortune smiles.
All come to share the joy.
Love shows no external wound.
But the pain pervades every pore
Devotee Mira offers her body
As a sacrifice to Giridhara for ever.
[Translated by A.J. Alston]
No butterfly whose frugal fare
Is breath of heliotrope and clove,
And other trifles light as air,
Could live on less than doth my love.
That childlike smile that comes and goes
About your gracious lips and eyes,
Hath all the sweetness of the rose,
Which feeds the freckled butterflies.
I feed my love on smiles, and yet
Sometimes I ask, with tears of woe,
How had it been if we had met,
If you had met me long ago,
Before the fast, defacing years
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
ONE star only for Love's heaven;
One rose only for Love's breast;
One love only to be given.
Star that gathers all stars' glory
Rose all sweetness of the rest;
Love that is all life's glad story.
TWO SOULS diverse out of our human sight
Pass, followed one with love and each with wonder:
The stormy sophist with his mouth of thunder,
Clothed with loud words and mantled in the might
Of darkness and magnificence of night;
And one whose eye could smite the night in sunder,
Searching if light or no light were thereunder,
And found in love of loving-kindness light.
Duty divine and Thought with eyes of fire
Still following Righteousness with deep desire
Shone sole and stern before her and above,
ONCE I pass'd through a populous city, imprinting my brain, for
future use, with its shows, architecture, customs, and
traditions;
Yet now, of all that city, I remember only a woman I casually met
there, who detain'd me for love of me;
Day by day and night by night we were together,--All else has long
been forgotten by me;
I remember, I say, only that woman who passionately clung to me;
Again we wander--we love--we separate again;
I said: This is a beautiful fresh rose.
I said: I will delight me with its scent,
Will watch its lovely curve of languishment,
Will watch its leaves unclose, its heart unclose.
I said: Old earth has put away her snows,
All living things make merry to their bent,
A flower is come for every flower that went.
In autumn, the sun glows, the south wind blows,
So walking in a garden of delight
I came upon one sheltered shadowed nook
Where broad leaf-shadows veiled the day with night
ONCE we played at love together--
Played it smartly, if you please;
Lightly, as a windblown feather,
Did we stake a heart apiece.
Oh, it was delicious fooling!
In the hottest of the game,
Without thought of future cooling,
All too quickly burned Life's flame.
In this give-and-take of glances,
Kisses sweet as honey dews,
When we played with equal chances,
Did you win, or did I lose?
Was your heart then hurt to bleeding,
In the ardour of the throw?
Once on a golden day,
In the golden month of May,
I gave my heart away--
Little birds were singing.
I culled my heart in truth,
Wet with the dews of youth,
For love to take, forsooth--
Little flowers were springing.
Love sweetly laughed at this,
And between kiss and kiss
Fled with my heart in his:
Winds warmly blowing.
And with his sun and shower
Love kept my heart in flower,
As in the greenest bower
Rose richly glowing.
Till, worn at evensong,
Once I thought my love was worth the name
If tears came.
When the wound is mortal, now I know,
Few tears flow.
