Collected Poems - Sri Aurobindo Ashram

52 England and Baroda, 1883 – 1898
Prince-errant, prop of battle styled
And flawless glass of chivalry,
O Thaliard, Thaliard, golden childe,
Wilt break a lance with me?”
As trailing thunder dies in heaven
Thro’ silence trailed his latest word,
And fire like the bearded levin
Beneath his eyelids stirred.
Childe Thaliard saw the burning stars
Vermilion grown like blood,
Thrice drew the serpent cross of Mars,
Thrice clamoured where he stood.
But Thaliard saw a milkwhite star
Grow large against the moon,
Quelled by whose candid flames, afar
Mars’ ruby paled in a swoon.
“Not here” he faltered like the wind,
“Not here, where murmurs poison sleep,
When haunted memories grown half blind
Their ghastly vigils keep.
“Not here, when drifts past happy shores
From mortal vision far withdrawn
With lustrous sails and dipping oars
The hull that brings the dawn,
Seek me, but in the cloudy time
When ruin blazons forth
In sanguine hues the vaporous clime
And champaigns of the north.”
As wine that from the bubbling lips
Of some fine beaker falls,
This honeyed utterance largely slips
Like murmurs in vast halls.
The wimpled moon bent down her ear,
And in the granaries of light
The seedling splendours thrilled to hear,
And all the east grew bright.