Let Shyama Dance There

Break the harp! Forward, with the ocean's cry!

            Drink tears, pledge even life -- let the body fall.

            Awake, O hero! Shake off thy vain dreams,

            Death stands at thy head -- does fear become thee?

            A load of misery, true though it is --

            This Becoming* -- know this to be thy God!

            His temple -- the Shmashan**  among corpses

            And funeral pyres; unending battle --

            That verily is His sacred worship;

            Constant defeat -- let that not unnerve thee;

            Shattered be little self, hope, name, and fame;

            Set up a pyre of them and make thy heart

            A burning-ground.

                                And let Shyama***  dance there.

     *  The wheel of constant birth and death, hence the world.

   **  The cremation-ground.

  ***  The Dark One, Kali.

                           - Swami Vivekananda, 
                             from ‘And Let Shyama Dance There’ 
                                                                   - poem in Bengali