The New Song

BY P.T. NARASIMHACHAR

(Rendered from Kannada)

I

Hour by hour in new and yet newer modes

This world is running on;

Glancing at the old with eyes of scorn

With boisterous laugh

This world is racing on.

Day after day, age after age, and for aeons on end,

E'er doing what it did,–

The same song, the same chorus,

Singing ever the self-same tune,

This world that ever trod in old, old paths,

Like a horse with blinkers on,

Is by an unknown power beguiled today

And, wild and crazy

It races on,

Glancing at the old with eyes of scorn

With boisterous laugh

This world is racing on.

II

Ignorance lit up with the glow of science,

New religious spurring on the stagnant mind,

New creations that bewilder imagination,

A new vision suited to a novel life.

The Poet has felt the new joy of a revolution,

And Art has put on the radiance of a new beauty;

Fresh colours to a picture,

New flourishes to a song

Hour by hour to new and yet newer modes

This world is running on.

To the heights of progress

To the ruin of a deluge,

Who knows?

Glancing at the old with eyes of scorn

With boisterous laugh

This world is racing on.

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