Collected Poems - Sri Aurobindo Ashram

258 Baroda and Bengal, c. 1900 – 1909
O but these are men of mind not yet with Europe’s brutal mood alloyed,
Poets singing in their chains,
Preachers teaching manly slavery, speakers thundering in the void.
Motley wear these men of brains!
Well it is for hound and watchdog fawning at a master’s feet,
Cringing, of the whip afraid!
Well it is for linnet caged to make with song his slavery sweet.
Man for other ends was made.
Man the arrogant, the splendid, man the mighty wise and strong,
Born to rule the peopled earth,
Shall he bear the alien’s insult, shall he brook the tyrant’s wrong
Like a thing of meaner birth?
Sreepoor in the east of Chand and Kédar, bright with Mogul blood,
And the Kings of Aracan
And the Atlantic pirates helped that hue, — its ruined glory flood
Kîrtinasha’s waters wan.
Buried are our cities; fallen the apexed dome, the Indian arch;
In Chitore the jackals crowd:
Krishna’s Dwarca sleeps for ever, o’er its ruined bastions march
All the Oceans thundering loud.
Still, yet still the fire of Kali on her ancient altar burns
Smouldering under smoky pall,
And the deep heart of her peoples to their Mighty Mother turns,
Listening for her Titan call.
Yet Pratapaditya’s great fierce spirit shall in might awake
In Jessore he loved and made,
Sitaram the good and mighty for his well-loved people’s sake
Leave the stillness and the shade.