May this wonderful poem give comfort and solace to all us hard pressed mortals when confronted by God's mysterious ways ...
http://wonderingminstrels.blogspot.in/2004/01/shaper-shaped-harindranath.htmlShaper Shaped -- by Harindranath Chattopadhyaya
Guest poem sent in by Subroto Mukerji
(Poem #1438) Shaper Shaped
"In days gone by I used to be
A potter who would feel
His fingers mould the yielding clay
To patterns on his wheel;
But now, through wisdom lately won,
That pride has gone away,
I have ceased to be the potter
And have learned to be the clay.
In other days I used to be
A poet through whose pen
Innumerable songs would come
To win the hearts of men;
But now, through new-got knowledge
Which I hadn't had so long,
I have ceased to be the poet
And have learned to be the song.
I was a fashioner of swords,
In days that now are gone,
Which on a hundred battle-fields
Glittered and gleamed and shone;
But now I am brimming with
The silence of the Lord,
I have ceased to be sword-maker
And have learned to be the sword.
In by-gone days I used to be
A dreamer who would hurl
On every side an insolence
Of emerald and pearl.
But now I am kneeling
At the feet of the Supreme
I have ceased to be the dreamer
And have learned to be the dream."
-- Harindranath Chattopadhyaya
----------------------------------------------------
Harindranath was the quintessential Bengali intellectual -- wealthy, high born, highly strung, temperamental, eccentric, coruscatingly brilliant but (pardonably) egoistic, proud of his abilities, but wasting them by his self-destructive tendencies (such as his compulsive philandering). He was marvellously gifted with an array of outstanding abilities, mostly
underutilised. Artist, poet, dramatist, actor, philosopher and metaphysician, Chattopadhyaya is typical of the towering intellects that have emerged from urban Bengal over the last two centuries.
His father, Aghoranath Chattopadhyaya, was a scholar of
Sanskrit, Greek, Hebrew, Persian and English, and Harindranath 'caught the
bug' from him. The senior Chattopadhyaya was principal of the famous Nizam's college at Hyderabad, now capital of Andhra Pradesh state in India. His daughter (Harindranath's sister) happened to be Sarojini Naidu, the legendary 'Nightingale of Bengal', and herself a fine poet, freedom fighter and orator.
In later life--as worldly men are oft wont to do--Harindranath came face to face with his mortality and shed his egoism by an almost relieved surrender to the Supreme. This poem is a frank admission of his foolish obsession with himself, in sheer neglect of the Self. Humility followed Self-Realisation and brought with it a glimpse of the larger purpose of the Spirit.
It is this surrender of the towering genius of Harindranth before his Maker that forewarns all us mortals, so wrapped
up in our own puny little egos, that to shed the obsession with self is to enter into the arena of a Greater Consciousness, where a transcendent experience awaits the awakening soul.
God Bless you all...
Subroto Mukerji
May this wonderful poem give comfort and solace to... (