Rajhans is one of the best and the most celebrated poems of Puran Singh ever written in the annals of Indian English poetry that too dating back to the colonial times of British rule and administration. 

The title hangs as a motif and a myth as we know it well what they symbolize? It is of a deeper meaning. The imagery of them is identical with serenade, silence, solitude, joy and bliss. The flutter and the flapping of wings has ever been admired and appreciated which is but natural.

When we read the poem, we get reminded of the age-old stories doing the rounds, of the travellers, pilgrims, geographers, mountaineers, sadhus, fakirs and yogis. Something as of Yeats’ Meru and Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey dances upon the mind’s plane.

To read the poem is to talk of Kabir and the Bhakti poets, devotional saint-singers of India. The myth of Mansarovar and the hamsa, how to bust it? Where is the lake located upon? How do the people revere it? It’s relevance with Kailash! How the panoramic view of it? How the crystal-clear water of the Mansarovar Lake and the swans swimming into?

Addressing the swan, the poet uncoats the mystical things, he lays them bare to be read with profit and pleasure.

It is but Kabira’s things he says, relays, Rama-Rahima’s; Ramananda’s; Raskhan’s, Jayasi’s, Ramananda’s, Shankaracharya’s. It is Buddha and his lotus of meditation he sees into.

An embodiment of Satyam shivam sundaram,  Brahma Vishnu Maheshvara, he comes to feel it through the delineation of the bird.

Rajhans!

The Golden Swan! Is it thy plumage that
shines, or the sunrise on the eternal snows ?
The dweller of Man-Sarowar, the lake on the roof of
the world! Thy golden beak parts milk from
water, in the living stream thou art a liberated
soul!
 
A rosary of spotless pearls is in thy beak, and how
sublime is the lofty curve of thy neck against
the Heaven's vast azure!
 
Thou livest on pearls, the Nectar drops so pure of
Hari Nam.
 
Great soul! lover of the azure, transparent Infinite!
Thou canst not breathe out of the Man-Sarowar
air, nor canst thou live out of sight of those
loftiest peaks of snow, and away from the
diluted perfume of musk blowing from the wild
trail of the deer!
 
Thou art the Spirit of Beauty, thou art far beyond
the reach of human thought. Thy isolation
reflecteth the glory of the starry sky in thy
Nectar Lake of Heart in whose waters the sun
daily dips himself!
 
Thou hast the limitless expanse of air, the companion-
ship of fragrant gods,

And yet we know thou leavest those Fair Abodes to
come to share the woes of human love,

Thou alightest unawares on the grain-filled barn of the humble
farmer; awakening Nature's maiden
hearts, thou informest love.

It is thy delight to see woman love man, the small
ripplings of a human heart in love flutter thee
in thy lofty seat,

Thou art the soul liberated through love, thou knowest
the worth of love, flying for its sake even midst
the cities' smoke and dust, perchance, to save a
human soul through love !!