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Britannia, sublime
To flame in generous deed;
In others’ cause to bleed.
So to the end of time
It shall be. Once she freed
The Iberian. Wellington
And Torres Vedras spun
The lines of victory then.
Another Trafalgar
The bleak North Seas await;
Where her fleet towers the main;
Each mighty battleship
Charged to the very lip
With thunder. Big with fate
They loom Britannia.
To Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose.
(Translated from a poem by Sir Rabindranath Tagore.)
Young image of what old Rishi of Ind
Art thou, O Arya savant, Jagadish?
What unseen hermitage hast thou raised up
From 'neath the dry dust of this city of stone?
Amidst the crowd's mad turmoil, whence hast thou
That peace in which thou in an instant stoodst
Alone at the deep centre of all things—
Where dwells the One alone in sun, moon, flowers,
In leaves, and beasts and birds, and dust and stones,
—Where still one sleepless Life on its own lap
Rocks all things with a wordless melody,
All things that move or that seem motionless!
While we were drunk with the remote and vain
Dead glories of our past,—in alien dress
Walking and talking in an alien tongue,
