SHABBI 161hood, dreams, melodies, a new morning, a bright cheerful sky, moonlight,
roses or a baby's smile. She is gentle and youthful, and her innocence inspires
reverence even in the most obstinate and hardened heart, her gentleness
would nearly cause blossoms to grow out of stone. She is both Venus and an
angel from paradise, for she brings both joy and peace to a troubled world.
She is the epitome of the mystery, depth and beauty of the universe, she is
the spirit of spring. She is the Song of Songs, yet she is sung by the God of
song (Apollo). She is a woman whose voice is as soft and lovely as the echo
of a distant flute, whose figure, steps and movements are full of melody.
Everything about her, such as the movement of her neck and the swaying
of her breasts, observes a beautiful rhythm. Yet she is more than a woman:
she is 'life in her sublime sanctity', she is 'raised above imagination, poetry
and art, above mind and above all limits'. She is the poet's sacred idol, his
goddess. He calls her 'daughter of light' who will deliver him from a sad and
imperfect world. Surely the terms in which she is described suggest that the
poet's beloved is much more than an idealized mistress, she is nothing short
of his soul, the creative principle within him. His yearning for her is the
romantic poet's longing to be reunited with his self, from which, as we have
seen in a number of cases, he feels he has been exiled. Conversely, because
he either projects himself in the outside world or assimilates the outside
world to himself, when he feels united with his beloved he is, as he says in
another poem, "When I see You',
Filled with an infinite joy as if I had been raised above all men
Wishing to embrace the universe with my soul, and all its men and all
its trees, (p. 125).Already, when he was barely nineteen years old, he could write in a poem
entitled 'Love' (p. 45) that love is 'a torch of enchanting light descended from
heaven', 'a divine spirit' which transfigures the world, and 'a river of wine,
whoever tastes it wades through hell without fear of burning' and that since
it is the ultimate end of life he should not fear being enclosed in a tomb.
When, on the other hand, the poet is deprived of love, 'Chaos is come
again', nothing in nature can afford him sufficient comfort. This agonizing
sense of the indifference of nature to human suffering is expressed in a
precocious poem written when the poet was only seventeen, under the title
'Love's Funeral' (p. 20). Such a poem, written in a language of utter simplicity
and with deep pathos and overwhelming emotion is saved from sentimental-
ity by the relative intricacy of rhyme scheme in its five-lined stanza form
which shows that the poet is still in command of his experience. The same
grief is expressed in other poems, for instance 'The Poet's Song' (n 64) or
'The Voice of the Lost One' (p. 81), where he writes abo>'*' _ s exile.