‘Do you remember me? or are you proud?’
Lightly advancing thro’ her star-trimm’d crowd,
Ianthe said, and look’d into my eyes.
‘A yes, a yes to both: for Memory
Where you but once have been must ever be,
And at your voice Pride from his throne must rise.’

YOUR pleasures spring like daisies in the grass,
Cut down and up again as blithe as ever;
From you, Ianthe, little troubles pass
Like little ripples in a sunny river.

From you, Ianthe, little troubles pass
Like little ripples down a sunny river;
Your pleasures spring like daisies in the grass,
Cut down, and up again as blithe as ever.

I, Lalla, willingly entered through the garden-gate,
There, O Joy! I found Siva united with Sakti;
There and then I got absorbed drinking at the Lake of Nectar.
Immune to harm am I, dead as I am to the world, though still alive.

[Taken from The Ascent of Self: A Reinterpretation of the Mystical Poetry of Lalla-Ded, by B. N. Paramoo]

I yearn for a tranquil moment
To be out upon the sea of harmony,
In that enchanted boat.
Oh, boatman, do you know my heart?

16

I would distil a cup,
And bear to all my friends,
Drinking to her no more astir,
By beck, or burn, or moor!

'I wish I had a quiet tomb,
Beside a little rill;
Where birds, and bees, and butterflies,
Would sing upon the hill.'

I will weep and weep for you, O Mind;
(my Soul) The world hath caught you in its spell.
Though you cling to them with the anchor of steel,
Not even the shadow of the things you love Will go with you when you are dead.
Why then have you forgot your own true Self ?

I WILL take an egg out of the robin's nest in the orchard,
I will take a branch of gooseberries from the old bush in the garden,
and go and preach to the world;
You shall see I will not meet a single heretic or scorner,
You shall see how I stump clergymen, and confound them,
You shall see me showing a scarlet tomato, and a white pebble from
the beach.

I was not bound. I let myself go completely; went
To those indulgences, half actual,
And half were turned about in my own brain;
Went into the illuminated night;
And drank strong wines, as when
The champions of pleasure drink strong wine.