Discoverers of Light

Homer

```

O peerless poet, a wild mystery has veiled

Thy deathless life.

Too little of Truth of Thee

Our mind captures from history’s drowsy core.

Thy vast adventure tales ‘Iliad’, 'Odyssey’,

Are blazing flames of warrior-suns.

Although stone blind, thou wert the light of Greece.

Ever she breathes in thy sea of enormous pride. ```

Socrates

```

Although thy pen was silent, mute,

A sea of knowledge dire

In thee the world of yore had seized.

Thy voice was Spirituality’s fire.

All wealth and ease of the world sublime

Thy deeds were apt to disdain.

Therefore thy spouse, Xantippe,

Was tortured by a ceaseless pain.

Many a foe of giant cloud

Against thy knowledge stood.

But gloom saw its doom in thee

With thee thy high manhood. ```

Plato

```

Plato, a man of noble birth and deeds —

Socrates conquered his life.

The words of his guide highly ever he preached.

His brain, a naked knife.

Through him his youth revealed an athlete great.

To him utterly owes

Philosophy and the budding minds of today.

Fearless, ever he glows.

The deathless day that brought his soul on earth

Appeared in secret again,

To close his diamond eyes and bind the world

With sombre ceaseless pain. ```

Aristotle

```

O Aristotle, O mind’s vastness of your day,

Your youth was reckless and wild.

But your brain never exiled

The thought that clasped the myriad knowledge-ray.

Yours was the student Alexander the Great.

The mighty culture Greek

Slowly began to leak

With you Aristotle; and now reigns a huge regret. ```

Virgil

```

Virgil, the giant poet

Of blessed Rome

His poems pined to see

The perfection's home.

‘Aeneid’, his great soulful gift

Declared his name.

With victory’s deathless flame

He plays his game. ```

Dante

```

O Dante, Alghieri

O poet of knowledge vast

In the bosom of ceaseless time

‘The Divine Comedy' must last.

Beatrice, the only fount

Of your inspiration-light.

The exile of fourteen years

Had failed to blight your might.

And bold and gold were you;

Politics high and stark,

Poetry matchless, free

In you alone we mark. ```

Joan of Arc

```

No school had she;

Her prayers were her knowledge-might.

On her country’s brow

She saw a huge and doleful night.

The Voice of God

She heard twelve years after birth.

The human soul

Endeavoured to end her mission’s mirth.

Her foes kissed the dust.

To France she gave the Victory’s crown.

Some years rolled by

Alas, she was seized by evil's frown.

Her outer sheath

Was burned but not her glory’s breath.

The eyeless French,

The ruthless French, achieved her death. ```

Leonardo da Vinci

```

The unique art that knows not how to capsize

In him took birth.

Upon the earth

His fruitful life had sprung a vast surprise.

With ‘Mona Lisa’ he scored the truth immediate.

The beauty unknown

At last was grown

Within her face the blue-gold perfection-fate. ```

Shakespeare

```

Alas!

certainty dare not come to unveil

His life genuine.

The Man universal abides in mystery's

Stupendous ruin.

But the huge oblivion sadly fails to fell

His action-tree.

The ocean-pride of English souls ever

In him we see. ```

Milton

```

Compelled by a dragon-fate

You failed to see the face of ecstasy.

The want of sight and wives,

Had planted in you a venom-tree.

But ‘Paradise Lost' of yours

Will never be lost with history’s fleeting flow.

Our world treasures your boon

And yours was the life that suffered a giant blow. ```

George Washington, born February 22, 1732

```

A divinely-inspired dream, daring and desperate;

A surprise that made history.

A farmer’s son founds the New World.

"Inferior endowment from nature,” he thought himself.

But the Divine made him

His efficient instrument.

High character and majestic will powerfully blended

With courage and capacity,

Stood forth the Man of the Hour,

The Man of Destiny, the Man of God,

And from his mighty dream mightily

Executed burst forth a new free world,

Destined to be the hope and defence of more

Free worlds to be.

Victory in the War of Independence —

England lost to her own offspring,

Now a powerful foe;

England won for herself a mightier friend.

A new era heralded,

A new shattering blow struck

At man's domination over man —

Independence the first step to unity —

And unity, one Truth of God.

George Washington, first to embody America's hope,

First in inspiration, first in confidence, first in war,

First in victory,

First in conquering the heart of his Nation,

First to envisage a federation of states,

Single, powerful, united, whole. ```

Shelley

```

O life filled with romance,

O man flooded with poetry-light,

Thy volcano-will devoured

Thy critics’ python-night.

Thy ‘ode to the Sky Lark’

And ‘Prometheus unbound’

Adonais tearful ‘Adonais’

On all brain-fields shall be found.

While sailing thy boat lost thee

A sad story indeed.

But thy pen’s heights and depths

Remained the world to feed. ```

Keats

```

‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever’

A son of this earth unveiled this lore divine,

O lover of beauty, thy ‘Endymion’,

And 'Hyperion’ peerless ever shall shine.

Thy wonder-arbour was born from five

Swift years — a recorded gift to mankind.

Although death snatched away thy life so hie,

The world keeps taut the demand of thy mind. ```

Abraham Lincoln, born February 12, 1809

```

Born under no lucky star,

But dynamic in his dreams

He fought his way to Luck:

“From log cabin to White House.”

No soul on earth supreme over another —

Equality every man’s birthright and treasure —

Black and white, brown and red

Make no difference —

This nation cannot exist half-slave, half-free —

From his voice these bold truths rang out.

He had the gift to dream of union,

The courage and capacity

To fight, the confidence to win,

The patience that knew no flagging.

Faith in God’s Justice was his stamina,

Faith in God was his might.

Natural the affinity of vision-luminous souls,

So Emerson could say of Lincoln:

”His heart was as great as the world,

But there was no room in it to hold a wrong.”

”Force is all-conquering,

But its victories are short-lived.”

Love is all-conquering,

And its victories live on forever.

What is really important?

Are we God's or is God ours?

The idealist in Lincoln reveals:

“We trust, Sir, that God is on our side.

It is more important to know

That we are on God’s side.” ```

Kennedy — Nehru

```

Slowly, steadily, unerringly

Nehru fought.

He won the fight.

Youthfully, speedily, dynamically

Kennedy ran.

He won the race.

Kennedy-Nehru.

Nehru-Kennedy.

Two are the hearts

That ached to fling wide

The windows of slumbering faith

In the house of humanity.

God’s Fragrance of Peace,

God's Bliss of Freedom

In measureless measure

They knew how to inhale,

They knew.

Never were they parched

In the deserts of false hopes.

Desires they had for the world.

God slaked their thirst

In His own mystic way.

Nehru-Kennedy.

Kennedy-Nehru.

They are one, indivisible.

They are one, invincible.

They are one, a tornado

Of God's stupendous smile

Toppling the towers of sorrow,

Fear and defeat. ```

Eisenhower

```

We bow to fear.

Fear fearfully

Bowed and bowed

To Eisenhower.

We think of war;

War thought of Eisenhower —

Victory too.

Two infinite extremes:

War and Peace —

War the destroyer

Of blooming world,

Peace the devourer

Of roaring War.

Eisenhower,

The Thunder

Of the Omnipotent,

Divinely arranged

For their dinner.

A dinner unprecedented,

And inimitable, too.

Both the Princes came in.

Two hearts became one

In a golden embrace.

They grew into all delight.

Dinner over,

War sat in absolute relief

At the feet of Eisenhower.

Peace commenced his dance,

A perfect stranger

To the dark hush of extinction — Night.

God smiled.

In words of dynamic Silence He spoke:

“The Man of the Hour.”

```

John F. Kennedy

In commemoration of President John F. Kennedy — November 22nd., 1963 —

Kennedy: Alone he stood

```

Alone he stood

Above all storms of life.

He stood alone

To challenge Pain and Strife.

Alone he stood

To feed a blooming race.

He stood alone

To change earth's tearful face. ```

Kennedy: Never was he alone

```

Never was he alone

Tragedy and sovereignty,

Catastrophe and victory

Freely in him were grown.

Never was he alone.

God's bright Promise and Bliss,

Earth’s wild ignorance and her kiss

Lavishly in him were grown. ```

Kennedy: Unique

```

Kennedy is unique.

Why?

God kindled him with His Dream.

On him God showered

His blessings divine

Thickly

Lavishly

Significantly.

Kennedy is unique.

Why?

God threw on him

The burden of the world at large

Smilingly

Consciously

Inevitably.

Kennedy is unique.

Why?

His soul visioned Tomorrow's Dawn,

Far beyond the flight of imagination,

Far above the strongest investigation,

Deep within the core of transformation

Kennedy is unique.

Why?

He pined with his bleeding heart

To free the world

From the spiked wounds of life.

This eyeless earth of ours

Will burst into glorious bloom.

He saw this diamond truth

While sleeping

Struggling

Daring.

```

From:Sri Chinmoy,Discoverers of Light, AUM Press, 1972
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/dsl