CLOUDS

When I was traveling last week from Tiruvarur to Mannargudi by road it was cloudy and at Tiruvarur temple above the Gopuram lot of birds were flying in the background of excellent clouds and my daughter was clicking lot of photos of them then I was thinking about two poets one the great Kalidasa and his Meghadutham which of course is a master piece beyond comparison and then Shelly's immortal poem, 'the cloud' which made an ever lasting impression on me. Let me share with you the pleasure of reading that poem wherein he has given a picture of Hindu philosophy see in my comments below and at the end see the verse I wrote titled Limitations of knowledge and read the info at the end of the message and try it out when the sky is blue pregnant women and those with weak eyes must not do this.


I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.

I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night 'tis my pillow white,
While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,
Lightning, my pilot, sits;
In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,
It struggles and howls at fits;

Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me,
Lured by the love of the genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea;
Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,
Over the lakes and the plains,
Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,
The Spirit he loves remains;
And I all the while bask in Heaven's blue smile,
Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,
When the morning star shines dead;
As on the jag of a mountain crag,
Which an earthquake rocks and swings,
An eagle alit one moment may sit
In the light of its golden wings.
And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,
Its ardors of rest and of love,

And the crimson pall of eve may fall
From the depth of Heaven above,
With wings folded I rest, on mine aery nest,
As still as a brooding dove.
That orbed maiden with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the Moon,
Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn;
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angels hear,
May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,
The stars peep behind her and peer;
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
Like a swarm of golden bees,
When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,
Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.

I bind the Sun's throne with a burning zone,
And the Moon's with a girdle of pearl;
The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim
When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,
Over a torrent sea,
Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,--
The mountains its columns be.
The triumphal arch through which I march
With hurricane, fire, and snow,
When the Powers of the air are chained to my chair,
Is the million-colored bow;
The sphere-fire above its soft colors wove,
While the moist Earth was laughing below.

I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
And the nursling of the Sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain when with never a stain
The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams
Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.

No other English poet has expressed so beautifully about the heavenly drama the thunder and lightning plays in the sky. If it was Kalidasa who gave life to the great 'Himalayo nama nagaadhiraja' and converted the ice mountain to an affectionate father with so much love for his daughter, it was Shelly who made the cloud a 'daughter of the Earth and the water and the nursling of the sky'

And no other English poet has translated the

'Punarabhi jananam, punarabhi maranam; concept of our philosophy as beautifully as P.B. Shelly has done in this poem.

"I am the daughter of Earth and Water.....I change but I cannot die." and again, " like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again.A western mind creating this ? Amazing !


LIMITATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE

I know how clouds are formed
I also know its uses
I also know the various names of its various forms and shapes; be they the
The ragged Fractus,
Or the superposed layers of Duplicatus,
Or the dense and dark Opacus,
Or the small flattened Humilis,
Or the small turreted Castellanus,
Or the comma shaped Uncinus,
Or the hairlike Fibratus,
Or the banded Radiatus,
Or the dense Spissatus,
Or the cauliflowerlike Congetus,
Or the entangled Intortus,
I also know nephography,
I can even make a cloud
But I can never direct the smoke
Or gas or dirt to the specific form I want in the sky
That is beyond my artistic skills
And scientific capabilities.

http://contentwriteups.blogspot.com/2009/04/limitations-of-knowledge.html

Last important piece of information to prove that everyone has the ability to make optimum use of creative visualization I had a Guruji who taught me something and everyone can easily try this. Just keep gazing at a small cloud in the blue sky and wish it to disappear either by dissolving or merging with another cloud nearby depending upon your intensity of visualization it will and it does definitely disappear