Is it dawn that is breaking?... No, Only a star that falls in the sea, Only a wind-bell's louder flow Of praise to Lord Gautama. Faithless dawn! with illusive feet It comes too late to ease his fate. He sinks asleep A helpless heap, Tho for it he may never reach Nirvana. THE SHIPS OF THE SEA Into port when the sun was setting Rode the ship that bore my love, Over the breakers wildly fretting, Under the skies that shone above. Down to the beach I ran to meet him; He would come as he had said: And he came--in a sailor's coffin, Dead!... O the ships of the sea! the women They from all hope but Heaven part! The tide has nothing now to tell me, The breakers only break my heart! KINCHINJUNGA (_Which is the next highest of mountains_) I O white Priest of Eternity, around Whose lofty summit veiling clouds arise Of the earth's immemorial sacrifice To Brahma in whose breath all lives and dies; O Hierarch enrobed in timeless snows, First-born of Asia whose maternal throes Seem changed now to a million human woes, Holy thou art and still! Be so, nor sound One sigh of all the mystery in thee found. II For in this world too much is overclear, Immortal Ministrant to many lands, From whose ice-altars flow to fainting sands Rivers that each libation poured expands. Too much is known, O Ganges-giving sire; Thy people fathom life and find it dire, Thy people fathom death, and, in it, fire To live again, tho in Illusion's sphere, Behold concealed as Grief is in a tear. III Wherefore continue, still enshrined, thy rites, Tho dark Thibet, that dread ascetic, falls In strange austerity, whose trance appals, Before thee, and a suppliant on thee calls. Continue still thy silence high and sure, That something beyond fleeting may endure-- Something that shall forevermore allure Imagination on to mystic flights Wherein alone no wing of Evil lights. IV Yea, wrap thy awful gulfs and acolytes Of lifted granite round with reachless snows. Stand for Eternity while pilgrim rows Of all the nations envy thy repose. Ensheath thy swart sublimities, unscaled. Be that alone on earth which has not failed. Be that which never yet has yearned or ailed, But since primeval Power upreared thy heights Has stood above all deaths and all delights. V And tho thy loftier Brother shall be King, High-priest be thou to Brahma unrevealed, While thy white sanctity forever sealed In icy silence leaves desire congealed. In ghostly ministrations to the sun, And to the mendicant stars and the moon-nun, Be holy still, till East to West has run, And till no sacrificial suffering On any shrine is left to tell life's sting. THE BARREN WOMAN (_Benares_) At the burning-ghat, O Kali, Mother divine and dread, See, I am waiting with open lips Over the newly dead. I am childless and barren; pity And let me catch the soul Of him who here on the kindled bier Pays to Existence toll.