“Our dreams and longings cover deeper dreams
And longings in the silence far away.”
We are roused from the beautiful lyrical lilt of Chattopadhyaya and of his sister, Sarojini Naidu, by the thunder of Muhammad Iqbal’s persuasive eloquence. He is a barrister-at-law at Lahore, an active Moslem opposed to Platonic illusion and non-progressive idealism.
“Plato, the prime ascetic and sage,
Was one of that ancient flock of sheep.
His Pegasus went astray in the darkness of philosophy
And galloped over the mountains of Being.
He was so fascinated by the Ideal
That he made head, eye, and ear of no account.”
Whether one agrees with his outlook or not, the fact remains that one cannot fail to be stirred by the intensely fiery spirit of Iqbal’s rhetorical writing. He is a leader. He sweeps everything before him like a great wind swirling through a forest of pines. He would re-create Islam, an active, non-Imperialistic, non-sensual Islam. In his own words, he is “the voice of the poet of To-morrow.” As Mr. R. A. Nicholson (his translator) says, the book “Asrar-i-Khudi” (Secrets of the Self), from which I have taken the extracts, “presents certain obscurities which no translation can entirely remove.” That is, of course, to European readers or to those not conversant with Persian poetry. For the book was originally written in Persian.
“Although the language of Hind is sweet as sugar,
Yet sweeter is the fashion of Persian speech.”
He is an inspiring philosopher.
“Thou art fire: fill the world with thy glow!
Make others burn with thy burning!
. . . . . .
Up, and re-inspire every living soul!”
I have spoken of the Youth of India, but the contributors to this volume range in age from the twenties to the seventies. There is little need for me to speak of Rabindranath Tagore. Mr. Edward Thompson (to whom I am indebted for the three translations) has acted in a Boswellian capacity, and the poet is as well known in England as are the great poets of our own nationality. I would draw attention, however, to the beautiful concluding lines of “Urvasi”:
“On the night of full moon, when the world brims with laughter,
Memory, from somewhere far away, pipes a flute that brings unrest,
The tears gush out!
Yet in that weeping of the spirit Hope wakes and lives;
Ah, Unfettered One!”
The flute-call of memory bringing restlessness and a strange peace on its liquid cadences. And a dimness of tears to stir the dust of Hope to life. “Ah, Unfettered One!” I have included some translations of Indian songs as sung by native singers, because I thought they might be of interest from an indigenous point of view. Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy, of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Mass., is responsible for their English rendering. The one commencing “Quietly come, O Beauty, come,” has a mystical meaning. We drift then into the Punjab, the Land of Five Waters, and find Puran Singh, the Sikh poet, breathing the musk of God-love through nostrils ever open to receive a spiritual fragrance.