Robert Southey — The Curse of Kehama

1.

Reclin’d beneath a Cocoa’s feathery shade
Ladurlad lies,
And Kailyal on his lap her head hath laid,
To hide her streaming eyes.
The boatman, sailing on his easy way,
With envious eye beheld them where they lay;
For every herb and flower
Was fresh and fragrant with the early dew;
Sweet sung the birds in that delicious hour,
And the cool gale of morning as it blew,
Not yet subdued by day’s increasing power,
Ruffling the surface of the silvery stream,

Swept o’er the moisten’d sand, and rais’d no shower.
Telling their tale of love,
The boatman thought they lay
At that lone hour, and who so blest as they!

But now the sun in heaven is high,
The little songsters of the sky
Sit silent in the sultry hour,
They pant and palpitate with heat;
Their bills are open languidly
To catch the passing air;
They hear it not, they feel it not,
It murmurs not, it moves not.
The boatman, as he looks to land,
Admires what men so mad to linger there,
For yonder Cocoa’s shade behind them falls,
A single spot upon the burning sand.

There all the morning was Ladurlad laid,
Silent and motionless, like one at ease;
There motionless upon her father’s knees,
Reclin’d the silent maid.

The man was still, pondering with steady mind,
As if it were another’s Curse,
His own portentous lot;
Scanning it o’er and o’er in busy thought,
As though it were a last night’s tale of woe,
Before the cottage door,
By some old beldame sung,
While young and old assembled round,
Listened, as if by witchery bound,
In fearful pleasure to her wonderous tongue.

Musing so long he lay, that all things seem
Unreal to his sense, even like a dream,
A monstrous dream of things which could not be.
That beating, burning brow, . . . why it was now
The height of noon, and he was lying there
In the broad sun, all bare!
What if he felt no wind? the air was still,
That was the general will
Of nature, not his own peculiar doom;
Yon rows of rice erect and silent stand,
The shadow of the Cocoa’s lightest plume
Is steady on the sand.

Is it indeed a dream? he rose to try,
Impatient to the water-side he went,
And down he bent,
And in the stream he plung’d his hasty arm
To break the visionary charm.
With fearful eye and fearful heart,
His daughter watch’d the event;
She saw the start and shudder,
She heard the in-drawn groan,
For the Water knew Kehama’s charm,
The water shrunk before his arm.
His dry hand mov’d about unmoisten’d there;
As easily might that dry hand avail
To stop the passing gale,
Or grasp the impassive air.
He is Almighty then!
Exclaim’d the wretched man in his despair;
Air knows him, Water knows him; Sleep
His dreadful word will keep;
Even in the grave there is no rest for me,
Cut off from that last hope, . . . the wretches’ joy;
And Veeshnoo hath no power to save,
Nor Seeva to destroy.

Oh! wrong not them! quoth Kailyal,
Wrong not the Heavenly Powers!
Our hope is all in them: They are not blind!
And lighter wrongs than ours,
And lighter crimes than his,
Have drawn the Incarnate down among mankind;
Already have the Immortals heard our cries,
And in the mercy of their righteousness
Beheld us in the hour of our distress!
She spake with streaming eyes,
Where pious love and ardent feeling beam;
And turning to the Image, threw
Her grateful arms around it, . . . It was thou
Who saved’st me from the stream!
My Marriataly, it was thou!
I had not else been here
To share my Father’s Curse,
To suffer now, . . . and yet to thank thee thus!

Here then, the maiden cried, dear Father, here
Raise our own Goddess, our divine Preserver!
The mighty of the earth despise her rites,

She loves the poor who serve her.
Set up her image here,
With heart and voice the guardian Goddess bless,
For jealously would she resent
Neglect and thanklessness. . . .
Set up her image here,
And bless her for her aid with tongue and soul sincere.

So saying, on her knees the maid
Began the pious toil.
Soon their joint labour scoops the easy soil;
They raise the image up with reverent hand,
And round its rooted base they heap the sand.
O Thou whom we adore,
O Marriataly, thee do I implore,
The virgin cried; my Goddess, pardon thou
The unwilling wrong, that I no more,
With dance and song,
Can do thy daily service, as of yore!
The flowers which last I wreath’d around thy brow,
Are withering there; and never now
Shall I at eve adore thee,
And swimming round with arms outspread,

Poise the full pitcher on my head,
In dextrous dance before thee;
White underneath the reedy shed, at rest,
My father sate the evening rites to view,
And blest thy name, and blest
His daughter too.

Then heaving from her heart a heavy sigh,
O Goddess! from that happy home, cried she,
The Almighty Man hath forced us!
And homeward with the thought unconsciously
She turn’d her dizzy eye. . . . But there on high,
With many a dome, and pinnacle, and spire,
The summits of, the Golden Palaces
Blaz’d in the dark blue sky, aloft, like fire.
Father, away! she cried, away!
Why linger we so nigh?
For not to him hath Nature given
The thousand eyes of Deity,
Always and every where with open sight,
To persecute our flight!
Away . . . away! she said,
And took her father’s hand, and like a child
He followed where she led.

   