The Poetry of Brajendranath Seal–Chief Features

The Poetry of Brajendranath Seal–Chief Features

Brajendranath Seal (1864- 1938) was a major Indo-Anglian poet of the late nineteenth century and of the first four decades of the twentieth century. He wrote two poetry books – ‘The Tales of Ind and Other Poems’ and ‘The Quest Eternal’ which have established him as a major poet. As a poet, he is romantic and as a romantic, he is a romantic- nature poet. As a romantic poet, he is interested in the past world of romance- a world of gods and goddesses and a world of wizards.

His Nature is full of natural objects as- trees, hills, rills, birds, nymphs, goddesses, monsters and so on which are full of wonder and mystery. In the poem ‘The Rime of the Wizard Night’ he visualizes woods far away from human society which is full of wonder, horror and natural beauty. The poet says in the poem:

‘In sunset tide, in green wood wide

Elf accents whisper close!

The deep dark folds of the forest-wolds,

They open like a rose…”

In a poem entitled ‘An Ancient Hymn,’ the poet visualizes a primitive age of chaos when there was no human being on earth. The poet says, addressing Coelus, a marine animal in Greek mythology:

”O World- drift cynical!

Coelus! Heaven!

Where wast Thou

In the primal Deep?

When all lay one, a universal grey,

And slept Its sleeplessness away

In dreamless sleep!

Dreams yet were not, nor shadows chased themselves,

As on that sea

On which the sun is setting evermore!”

The Poetry of Brajendranath Seal– Chief Features

‘Nature Unveiled’ is another good nature poem by him. In it, he has exhibited Nature in a naked form. Through this poem, the poet expresses his uneasiness in human society and hence he comes out of home and enters into the world of naked Nature far away from human reach. He says:

”All sick and faint I turned; like a mountain rill

That leaps from cavern dark, I wandered wide

Ov’r gorse and purple heather, following oft

A trail of golden mist upon the glades,”

The Poetry of Brajendranath Seal– Chief Features

In this poem, he goes not only in closer contact with nature, but he becomes one with the objects of nature and shares himself with every object. He expresses:

”I was one with the woods; my body, the Earth;

I budded in the buds and burgeoned fresh

In the green shoots; the tendrils were my veins

My eyes blossomed on every bush; my arms

Waved in the tall spiked grass; in the white fog

The hill side bathed with me;”

The Poetry of Brajendranath Seal– Chief Features

His nature is full of mystery and he often experiences a mystic vision in nature. In the same poem he says:

”Lone I stood, gazing on Creation’s face,

Our mother, ancient, fecund, e’er renewed

I saw her spirit brooding, like the dove.”

His nature is not only full of beauty, liberty, and mystery but also full of horror. The poet says:

”Dark Monsters of the Deep, sea dragon worth

Ravening rhinodone and strangling octopod

Death’s minions pasturing on some steep

Mountainous mass of coiled ugliness

With universal gurglings, hissings, groans!”

The Poetry of Brajendranath Seal– Chief Features

Thus as a romantic nature poet, he was an exception. Before him, in Ind- Anglian poetry, there was another nature poet whose name was Toru Dutt; but Brajendranath Seal as a nature poet is superior to her as his nature is vaster, wider and varied than that of Toru Dutt.

Brajendranath Seal as a poet was proficient in the use of blank verse and rhymed verse. The blank verse used in ‘Nature Unveiled’ is like that of Wordsworth. In ‘The Rime of the Wizard Night’ he employed ballad rhyme very successfully. He is skilled in creating vivid imageries of nature which are very sensuous and charming, as-

”The braes were sheen, the shaws were green

Each merry leaf would dance;

On russet brown, the sun came down

In showers of golden glance!”

The Poetry of Brajendranath Seal– Chief Features

In using words and phrases he is a tactful master. His poems substantiate that he, like Shakespeare, had a vast vocabulary at his easy command. He could make compound words and phrases after his will as- ‘forest-wolds’, ‘cloud-banks wrought’, ‘rock-fern’ ‘mountain-holds’ etc.

His place as a romantic nature poet may not be like that of Wordsworth, Shelley or Keats but in the whole range of Indo- Anglian Poetry, his place is after none. 0 0 0

The Poetry of Brajendranath Seal– Chief Features