SRI AUROBINDO

Translations

from Sanskrit and Other Languages

II. From Bengali

Songs of Bidyapati

XXXVI

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 Chompuk 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.

In Brindaban anew is mirth

For the restorèd bloom of earth.

These are the season’s sweet and these

The essence of the spring’s increase.