Vande Mataram
Translation by Aurobindo
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 dreams,
Over 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 million voices roar,
Thy dreadful name from shore to shore?
With many strengths who are mighty and stored,
To thee I call, Mother and Lord!
Though who savest, arise and save!
To her I cry who ever her foemen drive,
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, thou the awe,
In our hearts that conquer 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,
And the Muse a hundred-toned,
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 jeweled 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!
'Vande Mataram' translated by Sri Aurobindo. This note of his about this translation is very significant: "It is difficult to translate the National Anthem of
[Quoted in Bhabatosh Chatterjee (ed.), Bankim Chandra Chatterjee: Essays in Perspective, Sahitya Akademi,
