POEMS BY WILLIAM KNOX

HARP OF ZION
OH! WHY SHOULD THE SPIRIT OF MORTAL BE PROUD
MAMANGAM TRINITY
MORTALITY

HARP OF ZION

  1. Harp of Zion! pure and holy!
  2. Pride of Judah’s eastern land!
  3. May a child of guilt and folly
  4. Strike thee with a feeble hand?
  5. May I to my bosom take thee,
  6. Trembling from the prophet’s touch.,
  7. And, with throbbing heart awake thee
  8. To the songs I love so much?
  9. I have loved thy thrilling numbers
  10. Since the dawn of childhood’s day,
  11. When a mother sooth’d my slumbers
  12. With the cadence of thy lay—
  13. Since a little blooming sister
  14. Clung with transport round my knee,
  15. And my glowing spirit blessed her
  16. With a blessing caught from thee.
  17. Mother—sister—both are sleeping
  18. Where no heaving hearts respire,
  19. While the eve of age is creeping
  20. Round the widowed spouse and sire.
  21. lie and his, amid their sorrow,
  22. Find enjoyment in thy strain—
  23. Harp of Zion! let me borrow
  24. Comfort from thy chords again.

OH! WHY SHOULD THE SPIRIT OF MORTAL BE PROUD
  1. H! why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
  2. Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,
  3. A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,
  4. Man passeth from life to his rest in the grave.
  5. The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade,
  6. Be scattered around, and together be laid;
  7. And the young and the old, and the low and the high
  8. Shall molder to dust and together shall lie.
  9. The infant a mother attended and loved;
  10. The mother that infant's affection who proved;
  11. The husband that mother and infant who blessed,--
  12. Each, all, are away to their dwellings of rest.
  13. The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose eye,
  14. Shone beauty and pleasure,--her triumphs are by;
  15. And the memory of those who loved her and praised
  16. Are alike from the minds of the living erased.
  17. The hand of the king that the sceptre hath borne;
  18. The brow of the priest that the mitre hath worn;
  19. The eye of the sage, and the heart of the brave,
  20. Are hidden and lost in the depth of the grave.
  21. The peasant whose lot was to sow and to reap;
  22. The herdsman who climbed with his goats up the steep;
  23. The beggar who wandered in search of his bread,
  24. Have faded away like the grass that we tread.
  25. The saint who enjoyed the communion of heaven;
  26. The sinner who dared to remain unforgiven;
  27. The wise and the foolish, the guilty and just,
  28. Have quietly mingled their bones in the dust.
  29. So the multitude goes, like the flowers or the weed
  30. That withers away to let others succeed;
  31. So the multitude comes, even those we behold,
  32. To repeat every tale that has often been told.
  33. For we are the same our fathers have been;
  34. We see the same sights our fathers have seen;
  35. We drink the same stream, and view the same sun,
  36. And run the same course our fathers have run.
  37. The thoughts we are thinking our fathers would think;
  38. From the death we are shrinking our fathers would shrink;
  39. To the life we are clinging they also would cling;
  40. But it speeds for us all, like a bird on the wing.
  41. They loved, but the story we cannot unfold;
  42. The scorned, but the heart of the haughty is cold;
  43. They grieved, but no wail from their slumbers will come;
  44. They joyed, but the tongue of their gladness is dumb.
  45. They died, aye! they died; and we things that are now,
  46. Who walk on the turf that lies over their brow,
  47. Who make in their dwelling a transient abode,
  48. Meet the things that they met on their pilgrimage road.
  49. Yea! hope and despondency, pleasure and pain,
  50. We mingle together in sunshine and rain;
  51. And the smiles and the tears, the song and the dirge,
  52. Still follow each other, like surge upon surge.
  53. 'Tis the wink of an eye, 'tis the draught of a breath,
  54. From the blossom of health to the paleness of death,
  55. From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud,--
  56. Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be proud?

"Oh! Why Should the Spirit of Mortal Be Proud" is reprinted from One Hundred Choice Selections. Ed. Phineas Garrett. Philadelphia: Penn Publishing Co., 1897.

Mamangam Trinity
  1. Murugan, framed glorious in your peacock car.
  2. Shiva, strong, present, but not here supreme.
  3. And Pileyar, the Benificent – Tonight
  4. Lord of the Mamangam Trinity.
  5. Each god, caked in camphor smoke,
  6. Each form, caped in glitter cloak,
  7. Each name, caged in chanters’ throats.
  8. Thanks for then, praise for now,
  9. Hope for when? Infinity?
  10. Tonight, the darkest of the month,
  11. When full-moon poya’s glare’s at rest,
  12. Time now to call back to Mamangam’s depths
  13. Skulls, bones, clotted gore and cries
  14. Of lost men, slain boys
  15. Who once, too, here, paced, rolled, prayed
  16. As we, too, now, on
  17. These capricious sands of uncertainty.
  18. Each man, wrenched from life before time,
  19. Each boy, drenched in blood without crime
  20. Each voice, clenched in death – forlorn mime.
  21. Yet flute, drum, chant and prayer
  22. Meld them into your divinity.
  23. Women to gain sons, girls to gain husbands
  24. And mothers, stripped of their lineage
  25. Join widows, virgin once, now death-chaste
  26. Wound as one in flowers, gold and colour.
  27. Tonight tells us that death done and death to come
  28. Move in divine rhythm to outflank futility.
  29. So Lord Siva, protect us!
  30. Lord Murugan, now heal us!
  31. Last year, this year, next.
  32. May we have all we need and soon grow to want
  33. Through your dazzling, nurturing – oh so patient power -
  34. Our thrice-certain Mamangam Trinity.

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