From: Promithus by L. P. Devkota
Trans: PPD
Canto I
1. Like lightning on the mountain peak
sprung from Jupiter’s tossing locks,
Mother Saraswati! You immortal born with an armor!
O Grecian lute-bearer, come!
With a passion for the valiant, with superior vision endowed,
in the cool shadow of the snowy mountains,
sing a splendid song of the truly brave.
2. Casting spells of soulful melody from golden strings,
O, you destroyer of darkness! Looking upwards
at the golden cascade of fresh day-break,
pour the fine tunes of heavenly birds
in exquisitely intoxicating music.
You like light after daybreak
in the eyes of flying birds of imagination,
O veena-strumming mother!
3. You, beautiful being in white,
cheerful like the moon-blanched snow,
splendid in autumnal peace,
reside unbarred, unseen in solitary euphoria
on the Hellenic peak encircled by the clouds.
Speak!
4. O speak, you founder of language!
You have knowledge of great Ancient Greece.
Greece! -- That exquisite mother of the braves
osculated by the ocean on three sides,
with a group of islands, the grandeur of the land,
the nest of the enlightened ones,
the teacher of civilization
adorned with great learned men of the west,
the immortal foster-mother of Europe,
alive to this day--
Greece!
5. From the Age of Truth to that of Untruth,
great mountains surround the wonders of the world
resonating with multitudes of birds, far and distant.
On the coast of the Mediterranean Sea,
a wonderful, sapphire landscape.
6. The group of islands with a rugged coastline
is broken by the waves. The empire of Varuna,
the water-deity, girdled by a shoreline
and stirred by the winds, billows on three sides.
Wet creepers decorate the body of the forest
adorned with dark mountains.
7. When, having risen above the peaks, gold boils
in the east with a splash of bright red,
birds in flight trill their applause.
Their eyes see at the break of day
the message of a golden land of the beautiful.
8. There is no horizon in ken
as delightful and as desirable as this.
Every morning and every evening
the pinnacle is a charming blossom;
nature is not as generous elsewhere.
Emerald-sweet, abundant in blooms,
such fertile land luxuriating in the world!
9. Because of the loud blasts of the volcanic mountain
with a belly full of fire, it’s covered with a cloud of smoke.
The bright golden palace of Jupiter rises high
in the distance where tipsy gods dance
with divine damsels lulling to soft melodies.
10. Young, unaging, divine girls.
Wine, intoxication, reddish cheeks.
Surpassing Cupid, with enchanting curves,
lost in rhythmic sways,
unmatched in ornaments and in divine grace,
not touched by mortals, twirling, swirling,
orange shawl borders, ankle-bells of diamond,
fine camphor mixed with golden tinge,
live, animated dream,
expressive of feelings in aerial voice,
intensely passionate,--
they dance in the exquisite marble palace
bedecked with flowers and smelling sweet,
the golden ankle-bells a-tinkle.
11. But you, serene, very effulgent,
a moon of indifference far from all this,
a divine maiden, remain solemn.
Lyrical like spiritual light,
which descends to sensitive life on earth,
which first falls into the poet’s heart,
which is that of a frenzied worshiper.
12. O Mother! Say! Where is Pegasus,
that lightning-fast horse?
Clever horse that Bellerophon first caught
with a chain of gold?
I’ll mount it today, Mother!
I’ll fly the skyie path into the encircling clouds.
13. O! Give me a quaff, a sip to swallow,
from the golden bowl of your compassion, Mother!
Make me taste the flashing wine
charmed by Helicon’s light after the break of day--
in this fire of self-existing dawn of democracy,
in this newly realized current of time,
in the lovely-lovely-lovely intoxication of feelings,--
gulp after gulp!
