January Poet-Paramahansa Yogananda
Pilgrim Poem 'On Coming to the New-Old Land—America'
The Guru comes to America
Paramahansa Yogananda came to the United States in 1920 to speak in Boston at the International Congress of Religious Liberals. His speech was so well received that he quickly gathered a following. By 1925, his organization, Self-Realization Fellowship, was well established with the purpose of disseminating his teachings of yoga. He has come to be known as the “Father of Yoga in the West.”
A Pilgrim Poem
In Yogananda’s poem, “On Coming to the New-Old Land—America,” he gives his readers a glimpse of the thoughts and feelings he experienced in making the arduous journey to the United States.
The poem consists of three stanzas with the rime scheme, ABCDC, ABBCDCD, AABBCCDDEE. The first stanza has five lines, the second seven lines, and the third eight lines. The growing number of lines corresponds to the filling of the guru’s heart and soul with the events he is experiencing.
First Stanza: “Sleeping memories”
In the first stanza, the great guru implies that he will be seeing again people he has known before in prior incarnations; he has “sleeping memories / Of friends once more to be.” This hint points to one of the tenets of the philosophy he will be teaching—reincarnation. He is already in transit as the poem begins, “sailing o’er the sea.” And, of course, he sailed on the ship called The City of Sparta, the first passenger ship sailing to American after the end of World War I.
The great guru senses that he will love America, knowing that he already has friends there. He is coming “to adore” “The Pilgrim Land.” He will be an additional “pilgrim” to the land already filled with pilgrims.
Second Stanza: “The distant sleeping shore”
The second stanza dramatizes the great guru/poet’s anticipation of the new land to which he is bound. In his heart’s mind, he can see the “distant sleeping shore.” He can intuit that it “[l]ay in the twinkling night, / Dim through the vanished light.”
He senses a strong breeze from the ocean and begins to have unusual thoughts about his new home. The thoughts are ringing in the brain, but he is able to tame them with hope and work them into a tapestry of sweetness and delightful anticipation.
Third Stanza: “A raven-wingèd gloom did perch”
Then suddenly, like black bird of “gloom,” a frightening thought appears in his mind and seems to want to overtake his soul and strength, but that bird, as quickly as it came, quickly vanishes when he sees those “phantom friends.” He knows as he first meets those “friends to be” that they are there “to lend / Their cheer, / And end [his] fear!”
Even an advanced yogi can experience the mundane terrors of life if only briefly. In this poem, the great spiritual leader shows his human side as well as his divine ability to intuit that he is going to meet friends he has known before.
Guruji Reading
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