Bande Mataram

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Bande Mataram

Mother, I bow to thee!

Rich with thy hurrying streams,

Bright with thy orchard gleams,

Cool with thy winds of delight,

Dark fields waving, Mother of might,

Mother free.

Glory of moonlight dreamsOver thy branches and lordly streams,

Clad in thy blossoming trees,

Mother,

giver of ease,

Laughing low and sweet!

Mother,

I kiss thy feet,Speaker sweet and low!

Mother, to thee I bow.
Who hath said thou art weak in thy lands,

When the swords flash out

in twice seventy million hands

And seventy millions voices roar

Thy dreadful name from shore to shore?

With many strengths who art mighty and stored,

To thee I call,

Mother and Lord!

Thou who savest, arise and save!

To her I cry who ever her foemen drave

Back from plain and sea

And shook herself free.
Thou art wisdom

, thou art law,

Thou our heart,

our soul, our breath,

Thou the love divine,

the awe

In our hearts that conquers death.

Thine the strength that nerves the arm,

Thine the beauty, thine the charm.

Every image made divine

In our temples is but thine.
Thou art Durga, Lady and Queen,

With her hands that strike and her swords of sheen,

Thou art Lakshmi lotus-throned,

Pure and perfect without peer,

Mother, lend thine ear.

Rich with thy hurrying streams,

Bright with thy orchard gleams,

Dark of hue, O candid-fair
In thy soul, with jewelled hair

And thy glorious smile divine,

Loveliest of all earthly lands,

Showering wealth from well-stored hands!

Mother, mother mine!

Mother sweet, I bow to thee,

Mother great and free.

- Translation by Sri Aurobindo
Original Bengali song by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
Sri Aurobindo Poemsin SABCL, Volume 8 "Translations, From Sanskrit and Other Languages"( and in Collected Poems 2, page 227) published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram - Pondicherrydiffusion by SABDA