The best of the year has come, the Spring,Sri Aurobindo
Translations
CWSA.- Volume 5
Part Two. Translations from Bengali
Section One.
Vaishnava Devotional Poetry
Twenty-two Poems of Bidyapati
20
The best of the year has come, the Spring,
Of the six seasons one season king;
And now with all his tribes the bee
Runs to the creeper spring-honey.
The sun’s rays come of boyish age,
The day-describing sun, his page,
A sceptre of gold the saffron-bloom
And the young leaves a crowning-room.
Gold-flowers of champak o’er him stand,
The umbrellaed symbol of command;
The cary-buds a crown do set
And before him sings a court-poet,
The Indian cuckoo to whom is given
The sweetest note of all the seven.
Peacocks dance and for instrument
Murmur of bees, while sacrament
Of blessing and all priestly words
Brahmins recite, the twice-born birds.
Pollen, the flying dust of flowers,
His canopy above him towers,
His favourite the southern breeze,
Jasmine of youth and Tuscan-trees
His battle-flag. The season of dew,
Seeing sweet blossoms-of-bliss renew,
Seven-leaf and boughs that fragrance loves
And kingshook and the climbing cloves,
Seven things of bloom together, flees
Nor waits the perfumed shock of these.
Spring’s army too the chill estate
Of the dew-season annihilate –
Invading honey-bees – and make
Secure the lilies of the lake.
And these being saved yield them a home
In their own soft, new-petalled bloom.
For the restorèd bloom of earth.
These are the season’s sweets and these
The essence of the Spring’s increase.