Sri Aurobindo

Translations

CWSA.- Volume 5

Part Two. Translations from Bengali
Section One. Vaishnava Devotional Poetry

Selected Poems of Bidyapati

3

Sweet and strange as ’t were a dream,

I have seen a vision gleam.

Lotus-flowers were his feet

Bearing moons a carcanet.

Rounded thighs and ankles smooth

Towered of the glorious youth,

And continual lightnings drape,

So I dreamed, that faultless shape.

Dark Calindie, by thy stream

Slowly went he in my dream.

And I dreamed of boughs that shone

With a row of moons thereon,

Fingers fair like young leaves born

With a rosy light of morn.

Flower-of-coral bloom his lips,

Over which Love’s parrot peeps,

And his eyes like wild birds wake

And each curl’s a little snake

Stung me. Twice I looked and then

With a sweet and sudden pain

Maddened. Ah, what Power is this

For a look can slay with bliss?

Even so leaps, O my dove,

Into the heart made for him, Love.