Noon

The noon, a mystic dog with paws of fire,
Runs through the sky in ecstasy of drouth,
Licking the earth with tongue of golden flame
Set in a burning mouth.

It floods the forest with loud barks of light,
And chases its own shadow on the plains . . .
Its Master silently hath set it free
Awhile from silver chains.

At last, towards the cinctured end of day,
It drinks cool draughts from sunset-mellowed rills . . .
Then, chained to twilight by the Master’s hand,
It sleeps among the hills.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on May 14, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“Noon” appears in Harindranath Chattopadhyaya’s first collection, The Feast of Youth (Theosophical Publishing House, 1918). The poem forms one part of a suite of poems titled “Songs of the Sunlight,” which chronicles the day in five stages. In his review of Chattopadhyaya’s collection published in The Indian Review, vol. 19, no. 11 (November 1918), writer and theosophist Curuppumullage Jinarājadāsa writes, “No one outside of India will fully appreciate this poem; one must have felt the heat of the Indian noon, and not in the town but in the jungle. It is true that no poet ever before imaged [sic] the noon as a dog, nor spoke of the sharply defined glaring patches of light as ‘barks of light’; but the picture is true all the same. Mr. Chattopadhyaya justifies his imagery by evoking in our imagination the memories which he desires to evoke, and that is the test of the true poet. It is a poem of strength, and it will remain in future anthologies.”