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.