Mystic Verses of Sant Tulsi Sahib on Love and Yearning

The rainy season is specially chosen by Saints and poets in India for poems of love and longing. In this poem, Tulsi Sahib has compared streams and rivers overflowing with water to the lover’s eyes brimming with tears of yearning for union with the Beloved.

In whom longing for the Beloved has taken abode,

Every moment his body becomes feeble and enervated.

A stream of tears constantly flows from his eyes;

The pangs of pain ceaselessly smart his body and mind.

Like rivers in Sawan and Bhadon, (1) overflows the stream of my love.

Day and night I long for Him and tears fall like incessant rain.

The pain for my Beloved increasingly penetrates my being every moment;

My attention can be transfixed on nothing but him

Even as the moon bird (2) never gets satiated by looking at the moon.

Dark clouds gather and burst with thunder, and lightning dazzles the eyes.

The peacock crows in delight

and the rain bird (3) sings in longing.

I yearn for you ever more, my body keeps wasting away in anguish.

When I listen to the Sound, I lose my patience and I write to my Beloved.

With mind and soul as my couriers, I send my message to His Inaccessible Abode.

When I hear the tidings of His well-being.

My heart is filled with love and delight.

Ever since this yearning for the Lord has taken hold of me,

I have severed all connections with the world.

— Sant Tulsi Sahib, Book of Shabdavali
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NOTES:

(1) The months of the rainy season, which usually tally with July and August

(2) The chakor, a bird in Indian folklore, is enamored of the moon

(3) The papiha, another bird in Indian folklore, drinks only rain water and that too only at a particular time of the year