Dejection

THE sun is warm, the sky is clear,
The waves are dancing fast and bright,
Blue isles and snowy mountains wear
The purple noon's transparent might:
The breath of the moist earth is light
Around its unexpanded buds;
Like many a voice of one delight—
The winds', the birds', the ocean-floods'—
The city's voice itself is soft like solitude's.
I see the deep's untrampled floor
With green and purple seaweeds strown;
I see the waves upon the shore
Like light dissolved in star-showers thrown.
I sit upon the sands alone;
The lightning of the noontide ocean
Is flashing round me, and a tone
Arises from its measured motion—
How sweet, did any heart now share in my emotion!
Alas! I have nor hope nor health,
Nor peace within nor calm around;
Nor that content, surpassing wealth,
The sage in meditation found,
And walk'd with inward glory crown'd;
Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure.
Others I see whom these surround—
Smiling they live, and call life pleasure:
To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.
Yet now despair itself is mild,
Even as the winds and waters are;
I could lie down like a tired child,
And weep away the life of care
Which I have borne, and yet must bear,—
Till death like sleep might steal on me,
And I might feel in the warm air
My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea
Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony. ---------P. B. Shelley

Dedicated to Indian soldiers who died fighting the Chinese.

As the brutal rock shatters the placid glass
into a thousand irreparable fragment
A bitter grief is hurled at normalcy and peace.
Never will they be quite complete again
The crack of pain and death will always show
The weeping of wives bereft, of the anguished old
Will echo down the years of history
The wasted unspent lives, the loss of years
Too many to be counted
Too precious to be valued
A generation unborn, man's immortality...
there is the bitterness
So violent that the heart revolts and weeps
unceasing, arid, unshed tears
The sense of shame, of betrayal unforgivable
Never to be redeemed
Of sacrifice avoidable, insensate
that is the guilt we share
The valley is silent shrouded in death's immobility final and absolute.
But the soundless cry from the mountains beats upon our ears
Pitiless and Undeniable
We died, unsecured, helpless
We were your soldiers, men of bravery and pride
Yet we died like animals, trapped in a cage with no escape
Massacred at will, denied the dignity of battle
With the cold burning flame of anger and resolution
With the courage both of the living and the dead.
Avenge our un-played lives
Redeem the unredeemable sacrifice
In freedom and integrity
Let this be your inheritance
and our unwritten epitaph.