Mentem Mortalia Tangunt - Manmohan Ghose

Now lonely is the wood:

No flower now lingers, none!

The virgin sisterhood

Of roses, all are gone;

Now Autumn sheds her latest leaf;

And in my heart is grief.

Ah me, for all earth rears,

The appointed bound is placed!

After a thousand years

The great oak falls at last:

And thou, more lovely, canst not stay,

Sweet rose, beyond thy day.

Our life is not the life

Of roses and of leaves;

Else wherefore this deep strife,

This pain, our soul conceives?

The fall of ev'n such short-lived things

To us some sorrow brings.

And yet, plant, bird, and fly

Feel no such hidden fire.

Happy they live; and die

Happy, with no desire.

They in their brief life have fulfill'd

All Nature in them will'd.

And were we also made

Of like terrestrial mould

We should not be afraid,

Nor feel the grave so cold;

But, all oblivious of our fate,

Live sweetly out our date.

For the great mother loves

Her children far too well;

These longings that she moves

Their own fulfilment tell:

She would not burden us with aught

We really needed not.

O, not in vain she gave

To the wild birds their wings!

They spread them forth, and have

Heaven for their wanderings.

But we, to whom no wings are given

Why seek we for a Heaven?

And, when far o'er us fly

Those voyagers of the air,

Why must we gaze, and sigh,

O would that I were there?

Why are we restless, ill content,

Tied to one element?

'Tis not that in our tears

Some happier life we crave;

Our happiest, sweetest years

Mysterious moments have:

The sense of our brief human lot

Clings to us, haunts our thought.

O then this pleasant earth

Seems but an alien thing:

Faint grows her busy mirth;

Far hence our thoughts take wing:

For some enduring home we cry!

She cannot satisfy,

Or bind us: only ties

Immortal found can bless;

Only in loving eyes

We see our happiness;

Only upon a loving breast

Our souls find any rest.

Why thirsts the spirit so

For life? what moves it thus?

'Tis her voice; yes, I know,

'Tis Nature cries in us:

'Tis no unholy strife of ours

Against forbidding powers.

What though we gaze with fear,

So blank death seems to be;

What though no land appear

Beyond that lonely sea;

Still in our hearts her cry doth stay;

She will find out a way.

So in the chrysalis

Slumber those lovely wings;

So from the shell it is

The dazzling pearl she brings:

Her glorious works she works alone,

Unfathom'd and unknown!

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Manmohan Ghose (1869 – 1924) India

Source: Primavera: Poems by Four Authors, B. H. Blackwell, 1890 [Project Gutenberg]