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[It is believed that this poem, “The Babe,� still remains unpublished in India. Our thanks are due to Mr. Janamanchi Kameswara Rao who has kindly procured the text for us.
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I

“What of the night� they ask,
No answer comes.
For blind time gropes in a maze and knows not its path or purpose.
The darkness in the valley stares like the dead eye sockets of a giant,
The clouds like a nightmare oppress the sky,
And massive shadows like torn limbs of the night.
A lurid glow waxes and wanes on the horizon,
Is it an ultimate threat from an alien star,
or an elemental hunger licking the sky?
Things are deliriously wild,
They are a noise whose grammar is a groan
and words smothered out of shape and sense.
They are the refuse, the rejections, the fruitless failures of life,
Abrupt ruins of prodigal pride,
Fragments of a bridge over the oblivion of a vanished stream,
Godless shrines that shelter reptiles,
marble steps that lead to blankness.
Sudden tumults rise in the sky and wrestle
and a startled shudder runs along with sleepless hours.
Are they from desperate floods hammering against their cave walls,
or from some fantastic storms whirling and howling incantations?
Are they the cries of an ancient forest flinging up its hoarded
fire in a last extravagant suicide
or screams of a paralytic crowd scourged by lunatics blind and deaf?
Underneath the noisy tenor, a stealthy hum creeps up like bubbling volcanic mud,
A mixture of sinister whispers, rumours and slanders and hisses of derision,
The men gathered there are vague like torn pages of an epic
Groping in groups or single, their torchlight tattoos their faces in checquered lines,
in patterns offrightfulness.
The women weep and wail,
They cry that their children are lost in a wilderness of
contrary paths with confusion at the end.
Others defiantly ribald shaking with raucous laughter
their lascivious limbs unshrinkingly loud,
For they think that nothing matters.

II

There on the crest of the hill,
Stands the man of faith amid the snow white silence
He scans the sky for some signal of light,
And when the clouds thicken and the night birds scream as they fly
He cries “Brothers, despair not, for Man is great.�
But they never heed him,
For they believe that the elemental brute is eternal
and goodness in its depth is darkly cunning in deception.
When beaten and wounded the, cry “Brother, where art thou?�
The answer comes, “I am by your side.�
But they cannot see in the dark;
And they argue that the voice is of their own desperate desire,
That men are ever condemned to fight for phantoms
In an interminable desert of mutual menace.

III

The clouds part, the morning star appears in the East,
A breath of relief springs up from the heart of the earth
The murmur of leaves ripples along the forest path
And the early bird sings.
“The time has come� proclaims the Man of faith
“The time for what?�
“For the pilgrimage.�
They sit and think, they know not the meaning,
And yet they seem to understand according to their desires.
The touch of the dawn goes deep into the soil
And life shivers along through the roots of all things
“To the pilgrimage of fulfilment� a small voice whispers,
nobody knows whence.
Taken up by the crowd it swells into a mighty meaning.
Men raise their heads and look up.
Women lift their arms in reverence,
Children clap their hands and laugh
The early glow of the sun shines like a golden garland
on the forehead of the Man of faith.
And they all cry: “Brotber, we salute thee!�

IV

Men begin to gather from all quarters
From across the seas; the mountains and pathless wastes
They come from the valley of the Nile, and the banks of the Ganges,
From the snow-sunk uplands of Tibet
From the high-walled cities of glittering towers
From the dens dark trough of savage wilderness.
Some walk, some ride on camels, horses and elephants.
on chariots with banners vying with the clouds of dawn.
The priests of all creeds burn incense, chanting verses as they go
The monarchs march at the head of their armies
lances flashing in the sun and drums beating loud.
Ragged beggars and courtiers pompously decorated;
agile young scholars, and teachers burdened with
learned age, jostle each other in the crowd.
Women come chatting and laughing, mothers, maidens
and brides with offerings of flowers and fruit,
Sandal paste and scented water,
Mingled with them is the harlot, shrill of voice and loud in tint and tinsel
The gossip is there who secretly poison the well of human sympathy and chuckles.
The maimed and the cripple join the throng with the blind
and the sick, the dissolute, the thief and the man who makes a
trade of his God for profit and mimics the saints, the fulfilment.
They dare not talk aloud, but in their minds they
magnify their own greed and dream of endless power.
Of unlimited impurity for pilfering and plunder
an eternity of feast for their unclean gluttonous flesh.

V

The Man of faith moves on along pitiless paths,
Strewn with flints over scorching sounds and steep mountainous tracks
They follow him, the strong and the weak, the aged and
the young, the rulers of realms, the tailors of the soil.
Some grow weary and footsore, some angry and suspicious.
They ask at every dragging step how much further is the end
The man of faith sings in answer;
They scowl and shake their fists and yet they cannot resist him;
The pressure of the moving mass and an indefinite hope push them forward

They shorten their sleep and curtail their rest,
they outvie each other in their speed,
they are afraid lest they may be too late fortheir chance
while others be more fortunate.
The days pass, the ever-receding horizon tempts them
with renewed lure of the unseen till they are sick.
Their faces harden, their curses grow louder and louder.

VI

It is night.
The travellers spread their mats on the ground under the banyan tree.
A gust of wind blows out the lamp and the darkness deepens like a sleep into a swoon.
Some one from the crowd suddenly stands up and
Pointing to the leader with his merciless finger breaks out,
“False prophet, thou hast deceived us!�
Others take up the cry one by one.
Women hiss their hatred and men growl.
At last, one bolder than others suddenly deals him a blow,
They cannot see his face, but fall upon him in a fury
of destruction and hit him till he lies prone upon the ground,
his life extinct.
The night is still, the sound of the distant waterfall
comes muffled and a faint breath of jasmine is in the air.

VII

The pilgrims are afraid;
The women begin to cry, the men in an agony of wretchedness
shout at them to stop.
Dogs break out barking and are cruelly whipped into silence
broken by moans.
The night seems endless and men and women begin to wrangle
as to who among them is to blame.
They shriek and shout and as they are ready to unsheath
their knives, the darkness pales, the morning light
overflows the mountain tops
Suddenly they become still and gasp for breath as they gaze
at the figure lying dead.
The women sob out loud and men hide their faces in their hands.
A few try to slink away unnoticed, but their crime keeps
them chained to their Victim.
They ask each other in bewilderment,
“Who will show us the path?�
The old man from the East bends his head and says “The Victim.�
They sit still and silent. Again speaks the old man,
We refused him in doubt; we killed him in anger,
now we shall accept him in love, for in his death
He lives in the life of us all, the great Victim,�
And they all stand up and mingle their voices and
Sing “Victory to the Victim.�

VIII

“To the pilgrimage�, calls the young, “to love, to power,
to knowledge, to wealth overflowing.�
“We shall conquer the world and the world beyond this!�
They all cry exultant in a thundering cataract of voices
The meaning is not the same to them all, but only the impulse,
The moving confluence of wills that recks not death and disaster,
No longer they ask for their way, no more doubts are there to
burden their minds or weariness to clog their feet,
The spirit of the leader is within them and ever beyond them.
The leader who has crossed death and all limits.
They travel over their fields where the seeds are sown,
By the granary, where the harvest is gathered.
And across the barren soil where famine dwells and
skeletons cry for the return of their flesh
They pass through populous cities bumming with life
Through dumb desolation hugging its ruined past
and hovels for the unclad and unclean, a mockery of home for the homeless.
They travel through long hours of the summer day and as
the light wanes in the evening they ask the man
who reads the sky.
“Brother, is yonder the tower of our final hope and peace?�
The wiseman shakes his head and says
It is the last vanishing cloud of the sunset.�
“Friends,� exhorts the young, “do not stop. Through the
night’s blindness we must struggle into the kingdom of
living light.�
They go in the dark
The road seems to know its meaning and dust underfoot
dumbly speaks of direction,
The stars–the celestial wayfarers–sing in silent chorus
“Move on, comrades�
in the air floats the voice of the leader
“The goal is nigh.�

IX

The first flash of dawn glistens on the dew dripping leaves of the forest
The man who reads the sky cries
“Friends! we have come!�
They stop and look around
on both sides of the road the corn is ripe to the horizon
the glad golden answer of the earth to the morning light.
The current of dally life moves slowly between the village
near the hill and the one by the river bank.
The potter’s wheel goes round, the wood-cutter brings fuel to the market,
The cowherd takes his cattle to the pasture,
And the woman with the pitcher on her head walks to the well
But where is the king’s castle, the mine of gold, the
secret book of magic, the sage who knows love’s utter wisdom?
“The stars cannot be wrong� assures the reader of the sky.
“Their signal points to that spot.
And reverently he walks to a wayside spring from which
wells up a stream of water, a liquid light,
Like the morning melting into a chorus of tears and laughter.
Near it in a palm grove surrounded by a strange hush stands a leaf-thatched hut,
At whose portal sits the poet of the unknown shore and sings
“Father! Open the gate.�

X

A ray of morning strikes aslant at the door.
The assembled crowd feel in their blood the primeval chant of creation.
“Mother! Open the gate.�
The gate opens. The mother is seated on a straw bed with the babe on her lap,
Like the dawn with the morning star.
The sun’s ray that was wafting at the dooroutside falls on the head of the child.
The poet strikes his lute and sings out
“Victory to man, the new-born, the ever-living.
They kneel down, the king and the beggar, the
saint and the sinner, the wise and the fool, and cry “Victor, to man, the new-born, the ever-living�
The old man from the East murmurs to himself­�
“I have seen.�

­[Fredrick Bonn Fisher, while he was in India, was a great friend of Rabindranath Tagore. When Bishop Fisher was in America, poet Tagore gave a copy of “The Babe� to C. F. Andrews to be given over to Bonn Fisher which he has forgotten to do. Then Tagore sent another copy on 5-12-1930 during his sojourn to U. S. A. in December 1930 since it was the desire of the poet and C. F. Andrews that Bonn Fisher should help in its publication.]

While presenting a copy of the poem to Bonn Fisher, Tagore said, “I am sure that the poem is not mere literature to you but that it conveys to your heart a living voice of a friend who has often sat by your side.�

The symbolism of the poem startled Bonn Fisher in its unmistakably Christian inspiration and Fred asked the poet, “Does the Babe refer to Christ?� “You may interpret it as you like,� replied the poet–an enigmatic reply made less non-committal by the fact that it was addressed to Fred, obviously a Christian Minister–if given leave, would interpret it as referring to Christ.

Meanwhile during his visit to America, Tagore read this poem “The Babe� at Carnegie Hall to a large audience and the audience was deeply impressed. . Macmillans asked the poet to allow them to publish it immediately before Christmas in 1930. But the poet would not allow it, since he awaited the confirmation from Bonn Fisher.

When the poet had told Fred that he might interpret it as he liked, Fred could not do other than read it as a tribute from the great Hindu poet to Christ. The fact that the poet has presented the poem to him and entrusted to him its publication served as additional evidence to Fred of the poet’s intent.

The poem has been extracted from the book, Fredric Bonn Fisher (World Citizen), Macmillan and Co., (1944) a biography of her husband by Welthy Honsiger Fisher, the lady of the lamp, who lighted the candle of literacy in India with unmatched dedication to the cause of eradication of illiteracy through the Literacy House, Lucknow.

–Janamanchi Kameswara Rao
Triveni � Oct.-Dec. 1982