The Poetry of Manmohan Ghose–Chief Features

The Poetry of Manmohan Ghose–Chief Features

The Poetry of Manmohan Ghose– Chief Features

Manmohan Ghose (1869- 1924) was an Indo-Anglian poet. He came from an educated cultured Bengali family. He along with his younger brother Sri Aurobindo Ghose took his study at Manchester and London. He began to practise poetry at an early age. As a poet, he was greatly influenced and inspired by the English romantic poets. His private life was clouded by melancholy as he lost his beloved wife at an earlier age. Hence almost all his poems are melancholic and elegiac in mood and tone. During his lifetime he published one poetry book entitled ‘Love Songs and Elegies’. He died in 1924 leaving behind him a long poetic play ‘Nollo and Damayanti’, an epic ‘Adam Alarmed in Paradise’ and some lyrical poetry in fragments. After his death, his unpublished poems were published under the title ‘Songs of Life and Death’.

As a poet Manmohan Ghose was romantic. Love for his beloved and beauty in Nature are the two major themes of his poetry. His love poems are apparently autobiographical in theme and elegiac in tone. His love poems are very sensitive and passionate. Love for his beloved was to him a source of inspiration in life. The poem entitled ‘The Garden Passion’ is the finest specimen of his love poems. In this love poem, he has delineated the lovemaking scene of Julian and Irene. Julian was a Roman Emperor and Irene was his beloved. Irene as a maid was very bashful for which she hesitated to meet Julian. But at last, her sense of love for Julian became so vast and hot that she gave away her life and soul to the hand of Julian. As a love poem, it is very sensuous and passionate. While Irene and Julian met each other in a garden then Julian embraced her the description of which is amorous as,-

”He takes her hand inflamed with bliss

Her willing trembling hand in his;

And in glad tears she hides her face

Locked in her passionate embrace. 

To his her darling cheek is prest,

Against her own his fevered breast;

Love gleams from her eyes into his

In answer to each glowing kiss.”

The Poetry of Manmohan Ghose– Chief Features

‘Can It Be’ is another love poem that is elegiac in tone. In this poem, the poet shows that he was always in deep love with his wife, though she was dead. Everywhere, wherever he looked, he saw the image of his beloved and the beauty of nature became a token of love that reminded him of his beloved. He says:

”I see the roses on her grave

They made my sad heart bleed

I see the daisies shine like stars

And is she earth indeed?”

The Poetry of Manmohan Ghose– Chief Features

The second theme of his poem is love for Nature. Nature for him, like Wordsworth, was a philosopher, guide, friend and teacher. Poplar Beech and Weeping Willow’ is such a poem. In this poem, he expresses that he is weary of human society and hence he wants to take shelter in nature which is full of freedom, grace and beauty. The poet says:

”The blue day, the floating clouds, the stars shall your palace

Proffer their pure world of pomp, dawn her rosy chalice

Where the birds are you shall wing and revel to be lonely

In the clear of heaven to spire and sway with breezes only.”

In the same poem, the poet wants to learn a lesson from Poplar tree. He says:

”Teach me your still secrecy of thoughts that never sadden.”

The poem ‘London’ is another poem in which he expresses his love for the natural objects of London. He writes:

”Too long have I drowsed alone in the meadows deep,

Too long alone endured the silence Nature espouses.”

The Poetry of Manmohan Ghose– Chief Features

Though he dealt with the themes of love for his beloved and for Nature yet he lacked depth and sincerity in narration and feeling. The style of his poetry is neat and clean. He uses words and phrases with a clear and detailed meaning. There is no obscurity of meaning like the English Romantic poets. Sometimes he has used alliterations as a figure of speech very skillfully, as-

(I)Beauty into bounty change, bend down the eye that blesses.

(ii)Each fresh face, each figure, my spirit drinks like wine.

The Poetry of Manmohan Ghose– Chief Features

In some of his poems, he has employed pathetic fallacy (pathetic fallacy is a figure of speech in which nature is portrayed as taking a definite interest in human action) very successfully by which he aptly shows the excited state of feeling. And it is pathetic fallacy that adds poetic charm to his poetry. For example, the following lines are worth quoting through which the poet has shown the natural objects to take a definite interest in Julian and Irene’s lovemaking, as:

”It is the fragrance of their hearts

That the rose breathes: the water sound

Answer a feeling near, profound

And flashing, eddying fast and bright

It leaps with their own heart’s delight.

Those sphere of solemn light on high

Shine but in glorious sympathy

And heaven seems for no other sympathy.”

The Poetry of Manmohan Ghose– Chief Features

To conclude it is reasonable to say that Manmohan Ghose, not as a nature poet but as a love poet deserves a special place in the annals of Indo-Anglian love poetry. 0 0 0

The Poetry of Manmohan Ghose– Chief Features