The Himalayas

O Himalah! O rampart of the realm of India!

Bowing down, the sky kisses your forehead

Your condition does not show any signs of old age

You are young in the midst of day and night’s alternation

The Kaleem of Tur Sina witnessed but one Effulgence

For the discerning eye you are an embodiment of Effulgence.

To the outward eye you are a mere mountain range

In reality you are our sentinel, you are India’s rampart

You are the divan whose opening verse is the sky

You lead Man to the solitudes of his heart’s retreat

Snow has endowed you with the turban of honour

Which scoffs at the crown of the world‐illuminating sun.

Antiquity is but a moment of your bygone age

Dark clouds are encamped in your valleys

Your peaks are matching with the Pleiades in elegance

Though you are standing on earth your abode is sky’s expanse

The stream in your flank is a fast flowing mirror

For which the breeze is working like a kerchief.

The mountain top’s lightning has given a whip

In the hands of cloud for the ambling horse

O Himalah! Are you like a theatre stage

Which nature’s hand has made for its elements?

Ah! How the cloud is swaying in excessive joy

The cloud like an unchained elephant is speeding.

Gentle movement of the morning zephyr is acting like a cradle

Every flower bud is swinging with intoxication of existence

The flower bud’s silence with the petal’s tongue is saying

“I have never experienced the jerk of the florist’s hand

Silence itself is relating the tale of mine

The corner of nature’s solitude is the abode of mine”

The brook is melodiously descending from the high land

Putting the waves of Kawthar and Tasnim to embarrassment

As if showing the mirror to Nature’s beauty

Now evading now rowing against the rock in its way

Play in passing this orchestra of beautiful music

O wayfarer! The heart comprehends your music

When the night’s Layla unfurls her long hair

The sound of water‐falls allures the heart

That silence of the night whose beauty surpasses speech

That state of silent meditation overshadowing the trees

That dusk’s beauty which shivers along the mountain range

Very beautiful looks this rouge on your cheeks.

O Himalah! Do relate to us some stories of the time

When your valleys became abode of Man’s ancestors

Relate something of the life without sophistication

Which had not been stained by the rouge of sophistication

O Imagination! Bring back that period

O Vicissitudes of Time speed backwards