Kalampedia

Muhammad Iqbal, the National Poet of Pakistan, was born in British India. In the early twentieth century, his poetry emerged as a remarkable site where message and art coalesced, as he re-configured major poetic devices like metaphor, myth, and symbol to re-visit history, philosophy and the Islamic faith to develop his individual vision. While his poetic and philosophical works encompass a wide variety of subjects, here, we’re just going to discuss a short poem which could be considered an ode to the Himalayas.

Titled as ‘The Himalayas’, it’s the opening poem of the collection called Bang-i-Dara (Call of the Marching Bell). The poem eulogises the physical beauty and geographical importance of the Himalayas range. Let’s read its English translation.

O Himalaya! 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 Diwan 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 honor,
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 Himalaya! 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 Himalaya! 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!

Written over a hundred years ago, this ode to the Himalayas still feels as fresh as these mystic mountains.