Of what use is the poet's poem?

[donq]

[This thread is not quite a question. I just want to post it here. ]

Hi everyone,

I used to read some ancient (Sanskrit) poems but just came across this one on the internet and would like to share it with you. It’s the poems of Bhartrihari (5th century CE), translated by C. H. Tawney, Paul Elmer More etc.

Of what use is the poet's poem,
Of what use is the bowman's dart,
Unless another's senses reel
When it sticks quivering in the heart?

A poet who has not tasted grief
Can mourn in fiction, and command belief.
A man who mourns in truth has no such art
To find words for a broken heart.

Time is the root of all this earth;
These creatures, who from Time had birth,
Within his bosom at the end
Shall sleep; Time hath nor enemy nor friend.
All we in one long caravan
Are journeying since the world began;
We know not whither, but we know
Time guideth at the front, all must go.
Like as the wind upon the field
Bows every herb, and all must yield,
So we beneath Time's passing breath
Bow each in turn--why tears for birth or death?

Our life is like th' unstable wave,
Our bloom of youth decays.
Our joys are brief as lightning flash
In summer's cloudy days,
Our riches fleet as swift as thought;
Faith in the One Supreme
Alone will bear us o'er the gulfs
Of Being's stormy stream.

Cowards shrink from toil and peril,
Vulgar souls attempt and fail;
Men of mettle, nothing daunted,
Persevere till they prevail.

Our mind is but a lump of clay
That Fate, grim potter, holds
On sorrow's wheel that rolls away,
And, as he pleases, moulds.

Those who possess that treasure which no thief can take away,
Which, though on suppliants freely spent, increaseth day by day,
The source of inward happiness which shall outlast the earth--
To them e'en kings should yield the palm, and own their higher worth.

[gruntal]

At some point in time you ask " why ? ".

At another point in time you ask " why not ? ".

I guess it depends on rather you are over the hump or not .....

[donq]

Hi Gruntal,

Hahaha! Very true. (Good rhymes, too.)

When I was a young man, I "used to" ask something like this:

Philosphers are surely wrong to say
That attibutes in substance must inhere.
Her beauty burns my heart; yet I am here,
And she is far away.

You are pale, friend moon, and do not sleep at night,
And day by day you waste away.
Can it be that you also
Think only of her as I do?
from Bhartrhari’s poem)

Now, I’m too told to ask the questions above , so there are only some questions left:

"Don't be sad", I could say; but this is inauspicious
"All right be" is unfriendly thing to say.
"Laugh with me" is imperious. "Do as you wish" suggests
Cold indifference. And if I say "I’ll, too, cry
When you are weeping", you might or might not believe me.
Teach me my friends, what I ought to say
To make all of you, have the happy days.

(adapted from Bhartrhari’s poem)