The Lure of the Sunderban

Beauty enmeshed in her autumnal dream.
Sighs to the beauty that wakes in the skies;
Beauty awakes and opens her eyes
Caged in her lure of the Sunderban stream.

Beauty raising her languorous eyes
Gazes at the glow of the day new born
Pass a fire through a field of corn,
Or weave a dream that the wave beat bids,

With a crimson blush from the setting sun
The sun’s gold playing with the gold of the fields,
Where the silver shore to the river yields,
Where the bronze-limbed children wallow and run;

With the gold from the sky’s extremity,
The sun’s gold playing with the gold of the fields,–
Beauty full-bodied her babe’s food yields,–
Dream charmed to reality!

As Posora deep-bosomed, rolling hollow
Rolls her muddy flood to the bay,
By the winding river-brim follow, follow,
For a tongue-tied hour the tangled way.

Across the grove of sentinel date,
That watch the ‘gol’ die by the river’s brink,
To the muttering reed where the cattle drink,
Over the field that mourns her fallow fate.

Hark! now the boatman’s melody breaks
The heaped up hush of the afternoon light,
As lightning shatters the idol night,
As thrilled by a child-song peace awakes!

For a tongue-tied hour the tangled way
By the winding river-brim follow, follow,
As Posora deep-bosomed, rolling hollow
Rolls her muddy flood to the bay.

Or rest by the roots of the banyan spreading,
Moss-limbed, hollowed, gnarled and old,
Like a sage, arm-lifted, for years untold,
Broods on a thousand bride-sails threading–

Hope in the river-wave quivers along,
Serpentine streams of Sunderban flowing,
Bound where, O where! the bride-sails glowing
On sun-lit waves of laughter and song?