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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Fugitive, by Rabindranath Tagore
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Fugitive
+
+Author: Rabindranath Tagore
+
+Posting Date: November 4, 2012 [EBook #7971]
+Release Date: April, 2005
+First Posted: June 8, 2003
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FUGITIVE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Eric Eldred, Christine De Ryck, Charles Franks,
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE FUGITIVE
+
+BY
+
+RABINDRANATH TAGORE
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+W.W. PEARSON
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+    THE FUGITIVE--I.
+
+    KACHA AND DEVAYANI
+
+    TRANSLATIONS
+
+    THE FUGITIVE--II.
+
+    AMA AND VINAYAKA
+
+    THE MOTHER'S PRAYER
+
+    TRANSLATIONS
+
+    THE FUGITIVE--III.
+
+    SOMAKA AND RITVIK
+
+    KARNA AND KUNTI
+
+    TRANSLATIONS
+
+
+
+1
+
+
+Darkly you sweep on, Eternal Fugitive, round whose bodiless rush stagnant
+space frets into eddying bubbles of light.
+
+Is your heart lost to the Lover calling you across his immeasurable
+loneliness?
+
+Is the aching urgency of your haste the sole reason why your tangled
+tresses break into stormy riot and pearls of fire roll along your path as
+from a broken necklace?
+
+
+Your fleeting steps kiss the dust of this world into sweetness, sweeping
+aside all waste; the storm centred with your dancing limbs shakes the
+sacred shower of death over life and freshens her growth.
+
+Should you in sudden weariness stop for a moment, the world would rumble
+into a heap, an encumbrance, barring its own progress, and even the least
+speck of dust would pierce the sky throughout its infinity with an
+unbearable pressure.
+
+
+My thoughts are quickened by this rhythm of unseen feet round which the
+anklets of light are shaken.
+
+They echo in the pulse of my heart, and through my blood surges the psalm
+of the ancient sea.
+
+I hear the thundering flood tumbling my life from world to world and form
+to form, scattering my being in an endless spray of gifts, in sorrowings
+and songs.
+
+
+The tide runs high, the wind blows, the boat dances like thine own desire,
+my heart!
+
+Leave the hoard on the shore and sail over the unfathomed dark towards
+limitless light.
+
+
+
+2
+
+
+We came hither together, friend, and now at the cross-roads I stop to bid
+you farewell.
+
+Your path is wide and straight before you, but my call comes up by ways
+from the unknown.
+
+I shall follow wind and cloud; I shall follow the stars to where day breaks
+behind the hills; I shall follow lovers who, as they walk, twine their days
+into a wreath on a single thread of song, "I love."
+
+
+
+3
+
+
+It was growing dark when I asked her, "What strange land have I come to?"
+
+She only lowered her eyes, and the water gurgled in the throat of her jar,
+as she walked away.
+
+The trees hang vaguely over the bank, and the land appears as though it
+already belonged to the past.
+
+The water is dumb, the bamboos are darkly still, a wristlet tinkles against
+the water-jar from down the lane.
+
+
+Row no more, but fasten the boat to this tree,--for I love the look of this
+land.
+
+The evening star goes down behind the temple dome, and the pallor of the
+marble landing haunts the dark water.
+
+Belated wayfarers sigh; for light from hidden windows is splintered into
+the darkness by intervening wayside trees and bushes. Still that wristlet
+tinkles against the water-jar, and retreating steps rustle from down the
+lane littered with leaves.
+
+The night deepens, the palace towers loom spectre-like, and the town hums
+wearily.
+
+Row no more, but fasten the boat to a tree.
+
+Let me seek rest in this strange land, dimly lying under the stars, where
+darkness tingles with the tinkle of a wristlet knocking against a
+water-jar.
+
+
+
+4
+
+
+O that I were stored with a secret, like unshed rain in summer clouds--a
+secret, folded up in silence, that I could wander away with.
+
+O that I had some one to whisper to, where slow waters lap under trees that
+doze in the sun.
+
+The hush this evening seems to expect a footfall, and you ask me for the
+cause of my tears.
+
+I cannot give a reason why I weep, for that is a secret still withheld from
+me.
+
+
+
+5
+
+
+For once be careless, timid traveller, and utterly lose your way;
+wide-awake though you are, be like broad daylight enticed by and netted in
+mist.
+
+Do not shun the garden of Lost Hearts waiting at the end of the wrong road,
+where the grass is strewn with wrecked red flowers, and disconsolate water
+heaves in the troubled sea.
+
+Long have you watched over the store gathered by weary years. Let it be
+stripped, with nothing remaining but the desolate triumph of losing all.
+
+
+
+6
+
+
+Two little bare feet flit over the ground, and seem to embody that
+metaphor, "Flowers are the footprints of summer."
+
+They lightly impress on the dust the chronicle of their adventure, to be
+erased by a passing breeze.
+
+Come, stray into my heart, you tender little feet, and leave the
+everlasting print of songs on my dreamland path.
+
+
+
+7
+
+
+I am like the night to you, little flower.
+
+I can only give you peace and a wakeful silence hidden in the dark.
+
+When in the morning you open your eyes, I shall leave you to a world a-hum
+with bees, and songful with birds.
+
+My last gift to you will be a tear dropped into the depth of your youth; it
+will make your smile all the sweeter, and bemist your outlook on the
+pitiless mirth of day.
+
+
+
+8
+
+
+Do not stand before my window with those hungry eyes and beg for my secret.
+It is but a tiny stone of glistening pain streaked with blood-red by
+passion.
+
+What gifts have you brought in both hands to fling before me in the dust?
+
+I fear, if I accept, to create a debt that can never be paid even by the
+loss of all I have.
+
+Do not stand before my window with your youth and flowers to shame my
+destitute life.
+
+
+
+9
+
+
+If I were living in the royal town of Ujjain, when Kalidas was the king's
+poet, I should know some Malwa girl and fill my thoughts with the music of
+her name. She would glance at me through the slanting shadow of her
+eyelids, and allow her veil to catch in the jasmine as an excuse for
+lingering near me.
+
+This very thing happened in some past whose track is lost under time's dead
+leaves.
+
+The scholars fight to-day about dates that play hide-and-seek.
+
+I do not break my heart dreaming over flown and vanished ages: but alas and
+alas again, that those Malwa girls have followed them!
+
+To what heaven, I wonder, have they carried in their flower-baskets those
+days that tingled to the lyrics of the king's poet?
+
+This morning, separation from those whom I was born too late to meet weighs
+on and saddens my heart.
+
+Yet April carries the same flowers with which they decked their hair, and
+the same south breeze fluttered their veils as whispers over modern roses.
+
+And, to tell the truth, joys are not lacking to this spring, though Kalidas
+sing no more; and I know, if he can watch me from the Poets' Paradise, he
+has reasons to be envious.
+
+
+
+10
+
+
+Be not concerned about her heart, my heart: leave it in the dark.
+
+What if her beauty be of the figure and her smile merely of the face? Let
+me take without question the simple meaning of her glances and be happy.
+
+I care not if it be a web of delusion that her arms wind about me, for the
+web itself is rich and rare, and the deceit can be smiled at and forgotten.
+
+Be not concerned about her heart, my heart: be content if the music is
+true, though the words are not to be believed; enjoy the grace that dances
+like a lily on the rippling, deceiving surface, whatever may lie beneath.
+
+
+
+11
+
+
+Neither mother nor daughter are you, nor bride, Urvashi.[1] Woman you are,
+to ravish the soul of Paradise.
+
+[Footnote 1: The dancing girl of Paradise who rose from the sea.]
+
+When weary-footed evening comes down to the folds whither the cattle have
+returned, you never trim the house lamps nor walk to the bridal bed with a
+tremulous heart and a wavering smile on your lips, glad that the dark hours
+are so secret.
+
+Like the dawn you are without veil, Urvashi, and without shame.
+
+Who can imagine that aching overflow of splendour which created you!
+
+
+You rose from the churned ocean on the first day of the first spring, with
+the cup of life in your right hand and poison in your left. The monster
+sea, lulled like an enchanted snake, laid down its thousand hoods at your
+feet.
+
+Your unblemished radiance rose from the foam, white and naked as a jasmine.
+
+
+Were you ever small, timid or in bud, Urvashi, O Youth everlasting?
+
+Did you sleep, cradled in the deep blue night where the strange light of
+gems plays over coral, shells and moving creatures of dreamlike form, till
+day revealed your awful fulness of bloom?
+
+
+Adored are you of all men in all ages, Urvashi, O endless wonder!
+
+The world throbs with youthful pain at the glance of your eyes, the ascetic
+lays the fruit of his austerities at your feet, the songs of poets hum and
+swarm round the perfume of your presence. Your feet, as in careless joy
+they flit on, wound even the heart of the hollow wind with the tinkle of
+golden bells.
+
+When you dance before the gods, flinging orbits of novel rhythm into space,
+Urvashi, the earth shivers, leaf and grass, and autumn fields heave and
+sway; the sea surges into a frenzy of rhyming waves; the stars drop into
+the sky--beads from the chain that leaps till it breaks on your breast; and
+the blood dances in men's hearts with sudden turmoil.
+
+
+You are the first break on the crest of heaven's slumber, Urvashi, you
+thrill the air with unrest. The world bathes your limbs in her tears; with
+colour of her heart's blood are your feet red; lightly you poise on the
+wave-tossed lotus of desire, Urvashi; you play forever in that limitless
+mind wherein labours God's tumultuous dream.
+
+
+
+12
+
+
+You, like a rivulet swift and sinuous, laugh and dance, and your steps sing
+as you trip along.
+
+I, like a bank rugged and steep, stand speechless and stock-still and
+darkly gaze at you.
+
+
+I, like a big, foolish storm, of a sudden come rushing on and try to rend
+my being and scatter it parcelled in a whirl of passion.
+
+You, like the lightning's flash slender and keen, pierce the heart of the
+turbulent darkness, to disappear in a vivid streak of laughter.
+
+
+
+13
+
+
+You desired my love and yet you did not love me.
+
+Therefore my life clings to you like a chain of which clank and grip grow
+harsher the more you struggle to be free.
+
+My despair has become your deadly companion, clutching at the faintest of
+your favours, trying to drag you away into the cavern of tears.
+
+You have shattered my freedom, and with its wreck built your own prison.
+
+
+
+14
+
+
+I am glad you will not wait for me with that lingering pity in your look.
+
+It is only the spell of the night and my farewell words, startled at their
+own tune of despair, which bring these tears to my eyes. But day will dawn,
+my eyes will dry and my heart; and there will be no time for weeping.
+
+
+Who says it is hard to forget?
+
+The mercy of death works at life's core, bringing it respite from its own
+foolish persistence.
+
+The stormy sea is lulled at last in its rocking cradle; the forest fire
+falls to sleep on its bed of ashes.
+
+You and I shall part, and the cleavage will be hidden under living grass
+and flowers that laugh in the sun.
+
+
+
+15
+
+
+Of all days you have chosen this one to visit my garden.
+
+But the storm passed over my roses last night and the grass is strewn with
+torn leaves.
+
+I do not know what has brought you, now that the hedges are laid low and
+rills run in the walks; the prodigal wealth of spring is scattered and the
+scent and song of yesterday are wrecked.
+
+Yet stay a while; let me find some remnant flowers, though I doubt if your
+skirt can be filled.
+
+The time will be short, for the clouds thicken and here comes the rain
+again!
+
+
+
+16
+
+
+I forgot myself for a moment, and I came.
+
+But raise your eyes, and let me know if there still linger some shadow of
+other days, like a pale cloud on the horizon that has been robbed of its
+rain.
+
+For a moment bear with me if I forget myself.
+
+
+The roses are still in bud; they do not yet know how we neglect to gather
+flowers this summer.
+
+The morning star has the same palpitating hush; the early light is enmeshed
+in the branches that overbrow your window, as in those other days.
+
+That times are changed I forget for a little, and have come.
+
+
+I forget if you ever shamed me by looking away when I bared my heart.
+
+I only remember the words that stranded on the tremor of your lips; I
+remember in your dark eyes sweeping shadows of passion, like the wings of a
+home-seeking bird in the dusk.
+
+I forget that you do not remember, and I come.
+
+
+
+17
+
+
+The rain fell fast. The river rushed and hissed. It licked up and swallowed
+the island, while I waited alone on the lessening bank with my sheaves of
+corn in a heap.
+
+
+From the shadows of the opposite shore the boat crosses with a woman at the
+helm.
+
+I cry to her, "Come to my island coiled round with hungry water, and take
+away my year's harvest."
+
+
+She comes, and takes all that I have to the last grain; I ask her to take
+me.
+
+But she says, "No"--the boat is laden with my gift and no room is left for
+me.
+
+
+
+18
+
+
+The evening beckons, and I would fain follow the travellers who sailed in
+the last ferry of the ebb-tide to cross the dark.
+
+Some were for home, some for the farther shore, yet all have ventured to
+sail.
+
+But I sit alone at the landing, having left my home and missed the boat:
+summer is gone and my winter harvest is lost.
+
+I wait for that love which gathers failures to sow them in tears on the
+dark, that they may bear fruit when day rises anew.
+
+
+
+19
+
+
+On this side of the water there is no landing; the girls do not come here
+to fetch water; the land along its edge is shaggy with stunted shrubs; a
+noisy flock of _saliks_ dig their nests in the steep bank under whose frown
+the fisher-boats find no shelter.
+
+You sit there on the unfrequented grass, and the morning wears on. Tell me
+what you do on this bank so dry that it is agape with cracks?
+
+She looks in my face and says, "Nothing, nothing whatsoever."
+
+
+On this side of the river the bank is deserted, and no cattle come to
+water. Only some stray goats from the village browse the scanty grass all
+day, and the solitary water-hawk watches from an uprooted _peepal_ aslant
+over the mud.
+
+You sit there alone in the miserly shade of a _shimool,_ and the morning
+wears on.
+
+Tell me, for whom do you wait?
+
+She looks in my face and says, "No one, no one at all!"
+
+
+
+20
+
+KACHA AND DEVAYANI
+
+
+KACHA AND DEVAYANI
+
+_Young Kacha came from Paradise to learn the secret of immortality from a
+Sage who taught the Titans, and whose daughter Devayani fell in love with
+him._
+
+
+KACHA
+
+The time has come for me to take leave, Devayani; I have long sat at your
+father's feet, but to-day he completed his teaching. Graciously allow me to
+go back to the land of the Gods whence I came.
+
+
+DEVAYANI
+
+You have, as you desired, won that rare knowledge coveted by the Gods;--but
+think, do you aspire after nothing further?
+
+
+KACHA
+
+Nothing.
+
+
+DEVAYANI
+
+Nothing at all! Dive into the bottom of your heart; does no timid wish lurk
+there, fearful lest it be blighted?
+
+
+KACHA
+
+For me the sun of fulfilment has risen, and the stars have faded in its
+light. I have mastered the knowledge which gives life.
+
+
+DEVAYANI
+
+Then you must be the one happy being in creation. Alas! now for the first
+time I feel what torture these days spent in an alien land have been to
+you, though we offered you our best.
+
+
+KACHA
+
+Not so much bitterness! Smile, and give me leave to go.
+
+
+DEVAYANI
+
+Smile! But, my friend, this is not your native Paradise. Smiles are not so
+cheap in this world, where thirst, like a worm in the flower, gnaws at the
+heart's core; where baffled desire hovers round the desired, and memory
+never ceases to sigh foolishly after vanished joy.
+
+
+KACHA
+
+Devayani, tell me how I have offended?
+
+
+DEVAYANI
+
+Is it so easy for you to leave this forest, which through long years has
+lavished on you shade and song? Do you not feel how the wind wails through
+these glimmering shadows, and dry leaves whirl in the air, like ghosts of
+lost hope;--while you alone, who part from us, have a smile on your lips?
+
+
+KACHA
+
+This forest has been a second mother to me, for here I have been born
+again. My love for it shall never dwindle.
+
+
+DEVAYANI
+
+When you had driven the cattle to graze on the lawn, yonder banyan tree
+spread a hospitable shade for your tired limbs against the mid-day heat.
+
+
+KACHA
+
+I bow to thee, Lord of the Forest! Remember me, when under thy shade other
+students chant their lessons to an accompaniment of bees humming and leaves
+rustling.
+
+
+DEVAYANI
+
+And do not forget our Venumati, whose swift water is one stream of singing
+love.
+
+
+KACHA
+
+I shall ever remember her, the dear companion of my exile, who, like a busy
+village girl, smiles on her errand of ceaseless service and croons a simple
+song.
+
+
+DEVAYANI
+
+But, friend, let me also remind you that you had another companion whose
+thoughts were vainly busy to make you forget an exile's cares.
+
+
+KACHA
+
+The memory of her has become a part of my life.
+
+
+DEVAYANI
+
+I recall the day when, little more than a boy, you first arrived. You stood
+there, near the hedge of the garden, a smile in your eyes.
+
+
+KACHA
+
+And I saw you gathering flowers--clad in white, like the dawn bathed in
+radiance. And I said, "Make me proud by allowing me to help you!"
+
+
+DEVAYANI
+
+I asked in surprise who you were, and you meekly answered that you were the
+son of Vrihaspati, a divine sage at the court of the God Indra, and desired
+to learn from my father that secret spell which can revive the dead.
+
+
+KACHA
+
+I feared lest the Master, the teacher of the Titans, those rivals of the
+Gods, should refuse to accept me for a disciple.
+
+
+DEVAYANI
+
+But he could not refuse me when I pleaded your cause, so greatly he loves
+his daughter.
+
+
+KACHA
+
+Thrice had the jealous Titans slain me, and thrice you prevailed on your
+father to bring me back to life; therefore my gratitude can never die.
+
+
+DEVAYANI
+
+Gratitude! Forget all--I shall not grieve. Do you only remember benefits?
+Let them perish! If after the day's lessons, in the evening solitude, some
+strange tremor of joy shook your heart, remember that--but not gratitude.
+If, as some one passed, a snatch of song got tangled among your texts or
+the swing of a robe fluttered your studies with delight, remember that when
+at leisure in your Paradise. What, benefits only!--and neither beauty nor
+love nor...?
+
+
+KACHA
+
+Some things are beyond the power of words.
+
+
+DEVAYANI
+
+Yes, yes, I know. My love has sounded your heart's deepest, and makes me
+bold to speak in defiance of your reserve. Never leave me! remain here!
+fame gives no happiness. Friend, you cannot now escape, for your secret is
+mine!
+
+
+KACHA
+
+No, no, Devayani.
+
+
+DEVAYANI
+
+How "No"? Do not lie to me! Love's insight is divine. Day after day, in
+raising your head, in a glance, in the motion of your hands, your love
+spoke as the sea speaks through its waves. On a sudden my voice would send
+your heart quivering through your limbs--have I never witnessed it? I know
+you, and therefore you are my captive for ever. The very king of your Gods
+shall not sever this bond.
+
+
+KACHA
+
+Was it for this, Devayani, that I toiled, away from home and kindred, all
+these years?
+
+
+DEVAYANI
+
+Why not? Is only knowledge precious? Is love cheap? Lay hold on this
+moment. Have the courage to own that a woman's heart is worth all as much
+penance as men undergo for the sake of power, knowledge, or reputation.
+
+
+KACHA
+
+I gave my solemn promise to the Gods that I would bring them this lore of
+deathless life.
+
+
+DEVAYANI
+
+But is it true you had eyes for nothing save your books? That you never
+broke off your studies to pay me homage with flowers, never lay in wait for
+a chance, of an evening, to help me water my flower-beds? What made you sit
+by me on the grass and sing songs you brought hither from the assembly of
+the stars, while darkness stooped over the river bank as love droops over
+its own sad silence? Were these parts of a cruel conspiracy plotted in your
+Paradise? Was all for the sake of access to my father's heart?--and after
+success, were you, departing, to throw some cheap gratitude, like small
+coins, to the deluded door-keeper?
+
+
+KACHA
+
+What profit were there, proud woman, in knowing the truth? If I did wrong
+to serve you with a passionate devotion cherished in secret, I have had
+ample punishment. This is no time to question whether my love be true or
+not; my life's work awaits me. Though my heart must henceforth enclose a
+red flame vainly striving to devour emptiness, still I must go back to that
+Paradise which will nevermore be Paradise to me. I owe the Gods a new
+divinity, hard won by my studies, before I may think of happiness. Forgive
+me, Devayani, and know that my suffering is doubled by the pain I
+unwillingly inflict on you.
+
+
+DEVAYANI
+
+Forgiveness! You have angered my heart till it is hard and burning like a
+thunderbolt! You can go back to your work and your glory, but what is left
+for me? Memory is a bed of thorns, and secret shame will gnaw at the roots
+of my life. You came like a wayfarer, sat through the sunny hours in the
+shade of my garden, and to while time away you plucked all its flowers and
+wove them into a chain. And now, parting, you snap the thread and let the
+flowers drop on the dust! Accursed be that great knowledge you have
+earned!--a burden that, though others share equally with you, will never be
+lightened. For lack of love may it ever remain as foreign to your life as
+the cold stars are to the un-espoused darkness of virgin Night!
+
+
+
+21
+
+
+I
+
+"Why these preparations without end?"--I said to Mind--"Is some one to
+come?"
+
+Mind replied, "I am enormously busy gathering things and building towers. I
+have no time to answer such questions."
+
+Meekly I went back to my work.
+
+When things were grown to a pile, when seven wings of his palace were
+complete, I said to Mind, "Is it not enough?"
+
+Mind began to say, "Not enough to contain--" and then stopped.
+
+"Contain what?" I asked.
+
+Mind affected not to hear.
+
+I suspected that Mind did not know, and with ceaseless work smothered the
+question.
+
+His one refrain was, "I must have more."
+
+"Why must you?"
+
+"Because it is great."
+
+"What is great?"
+
+Mind remained silent. I pressed for an answer.
+
+In contempt and anger, Mind said, "Why ask about things that are not? Take
+notice of those that are hugely before you,--the struggle and the fight,
+the army and armaments, the bricks and mortar, and labourers without
+number."
+
+I thought "Possibly Mind is wise."
+
+
+II
+
+Days passed. More wings were added to his palace--more lands to his domain.
+
+The season of rains came to an end. The dark clouds became white and thin,
+and in the rain-washed sky the sunny hours hovered like butterflies over an
+unseen flower. I was bewildered and asked everybody I met, "What is that
+music in the breeze?"
+
+A tramp walked the road whose dress was wild as his manner; he said, "Hark
+to the music of the Coming!"
+
+I cannot tell why I was convinced, but the words broke from me, "We have
+not much longer to wait."
+
+"It is close at hand," said the mad man.
+
+I went to the office and boldly said to Mind, "Stop all work!"
+
+Mind asked, "Have you any news?"
+
+"Yes," I answered, "News of the Coming." But I could not explain.
+
+Mind shook his head and said, "There are neither banners nor pageantry!"
+
+
+III
+
+The night waned, the stars paled in the sky. Suddenly the touchstone of the
+morning light tinged everything with gold. A cry spread from mouth to
+mouth--
+
+"Here is the herald!"
+
+I bowed my head and asked, "Is he coming?"
+
+The answer seemed to burst from all sides, "Yes."
+
+Mind grew troubled and said, "The dome of my building is not yet finished,
+nothing is in order."
+
+A voice came from the sky, "Pull down your building!"
+
+"But why?" asked Mind.
+
+"Because to-day is the day of the Coming, and your building is in the way."
+
+
+IV
+
+The lofty building lies in the dust and all is scattered and broken.
+
+Mind looked about. But what was there to see?
+
+Only the morning star and the lily washed in dew.
+
+And what else? A child running laughing from its mother's arms into the
+open light.
+
+"Was it only for this that they said it was the day of the Coming?"
+
+"Yes, this was why they said there was music in the air and light in the
+sky."
+
+"And did they claim all the earth only for this?"
+
+"Yes," came the answer. "Mind, you build walls to imprison yourself. Your
+servants toil to enslave themselves; but the whole earth and infinite space
+are for the child, for the New Life."
+
+"What does that child bring you?"
+
+"Hope for all the world and its joy."
+
+Mind asked me, "Poet, do you understand?"
+
+"I lay my work aside," I said, "for I must have time to understand."
+
+
+
+22
+
+TRANSLATIONS
+
+
+VAISHNAVA SONGS
+
+
+
+1
+
+
+Oh Sakhi,[1] my sorrow knows no bounds.
+
+[Footnote 1: The woman friend of a woman.]
+
+August comes laden with rain clouds and my house is desolate.
+
+The stormy sky growls, the earth is flooded with rain, my love is far away,
+and my heart is torn with anguish.
+
+The peacocks dance, for the clouds rumble and frogs croak.
+
+The night brims with darkness flicked with lightning.
+
+Vidyapati[2] asks, "Maiden, how are you to spend your days and nights
+without your lord?"
+
+[Footnote 2: The name of the poet.]
+
+
+
+2
+
+
+Lucky was my awakening this morning, for I saw my beloved.
+
+The sky was one piece of joy, and my life and youth were fulfilled.
+
+To-day my house becomes my house in truth, and my body my body.
+
+Fortune has proved a friend, and my doubts are dispelled.
+
+Birds, sing your best; moon, shed your fairest light!
+
+Let fly your darts, Love-God, in millions!
+
+I wait for the moment when my body will grow golden at his touch.
+
+Vidyapati says, "Immense is your good fortune, and blessed is your love."
+
+
+
+3
+
+
+I feel my body vanishing into the dust whereon my beloved walks.
+
+I feel one with the water of the lake where he bathes.
+
+Oh Sakhi, my love crosses death's boundary when I meet him.
+
+My heart melts in the light and merges in the mirror whereby he views his
+face.
+
+I move with the air to kiss him when he waves his fan, and wherever he
+wanders I enclose him like the sky.
+
+Govindadas says, "You are the gold-setting, fair maiden, he is the
+emerald."
+
+
+
+4
+
+
+My love, I will keep you hidden in my eyes; I will thread your image like a
+gem on my joy and hang it on my bosom.
+
+You have been in my heart ever since I was a child, throughout my youth,
+throughout my life, even through all my dreams.
+
+You dwell in my being when I sleep and when I wake.
+
+Know that I am a woman, and bear with me when you find me wanting.
+
+For I have thought and thought and know for certain that all that is left
+for me in this world is your love, and if I lose you for a moment I die.
+
+Chandidas says, "Be tender to her who is yours in life and death."
+
+
+
+5
+
+
+"Fruit to sell, Fruit to sell," cried the woman at the door.
+
+The Child came out of the house.
+
+"Give me some fruit," said he, putting a handful of rice in her basket.
+
+The fruit-seller gazed at his face and her eyes swam with tears.
+
+"Who is the fortunate mother," she cried, "that has clasped you in her arms
+and fed you at her breast, and whom your dear voice called 'Mother'?"
+
+"Offer your fruit to him," says the poet, "and with it your life."
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+
+1
+
+
+Endlessly varied art thou in the exuberant world, Lady of Manifold
+Magnificence. Thy path is strewn with lights, thy touch thrills into
+flowers; that trailing skirt of thine sweeps the whirl of a dance among the
+stars, and thy many-toned music is echoed from innumerable worlds through
+signs and colours.
+
+Single and alone in the unfathomed stillness of the soul, art thou, Lady of
+Silence and Solitude, a vision thrilled with light, a lonely lotus
+blossoming on the stem of love.
+
+
+
+2
+
+
+Behind the rusty iron gratings of the opposite window sits a girl, dark and
+plain of face, like a boat stranded on a sand-bank when the river is
+shallow in the summer.
+
+I come back to my room after my day's work, and my tired eyes are lured to
+her.
+
+She seems to me like a lake with its dark lonely waters edged by moonlight.
+
+She has only her window for freedom: there the morning light meets her
+musings, and through it her dark eyes like lost stars travel back to their
+sky.
+
+
+
+3
+
+
+I remember the day.
+
+The heavy shower of rain is slackening into fitful pauses, renewed gusts of
+wind startle it from a first lull.
+
+I take up my instrument. Idly I touch the strings, till, without my
+knowing, the music borrows the mad cadence of that storm.
+
+I see her figure as she steals from her work, stops at my door, and
+retreats with hesitating steps. She comes again, stands outside leaning
+against the wall, then slowly enters the room and sits down. With head
+bent, she plies her needle in silence; but soon stops her work, and looks
+out of the window through the rain at the blurred line of trees.
+
+Only this--one hour of a rainy noon filled with shadows and song and
+silence.
+
+
+
+4
+
+
+While stepping into the carriage she turned her head and threw me a swift
+glance of farewell.
+
+This was her last gift to me. But where can I keep it safe from the
+trampling hours?
+
+Must evening sweep this gleam of anguish away, as it will the last flicker
+of fire from the sunset?
+
+Ought it to be washed off by the rain, as treasured pollens are from
+heart-broken flowers?
+
+Leave kingly glory and the wealth of the rich to death. But may not tears
+keep ever fresh the memory of a glance flung through a passionate moment?
+
+"Give it to me to keep," said my song; "I never touch kings' glory or the
+wealth of the rich, but these small things are mine for ever."
+
+
+
+5
+
+
+You give yourself to me, like a flower that blossoms at night, whose
+presence is known by the dew that drips from it, by the odour shed through
+the darkness, as the first steps of Spring are by the buds that thicken the
+twigs.
+
+You break upon my thought like waves at the high tide, and my heart is
+drowned under surging songs.
+
+My heart knew of your coming, as the night feels the approach of dawn. The
+clouds are aflame and my sky fills with a great revealing flood.
+
+
+
+6
+
+
+I was to go away; still she did not speak. But I felt, from a slight
+quiver, her yearning arms would say: "Ah no, not yet."
+
+I have often heard her pleading hands vocal in a touch, though they knew
+not what they said.
+
+I have known those arms to stammer when, had they not, they would have
+become youth's garland round my neck.
+
+Their little gestures return to remembrance in the covert of still hours,
+like truants they playfully reveal things she had kept secret from me.
+
+
+
+7
+
+
+My songs are like bees; they follow through the air some fragrant
+trace--some memory--of you, to hum around your shyness, eager for its
+hidden store.
+
+When the freshness of dawn droops in the sun, when in the noon the air
+hangs low with heaviness and the forest is silent, my songs return home,
+their languid wings dusted with gold.
+
+
+
+8
+
+
+I believe you had visited me in a vision before we ever met, like some
+foretaste of April before the spring broke into flower.
+
+That vision must have come when all was bathed in the odour of _sal_
+blossom; when the twilight twinkle of the river fringed its yellow sands,
+and the vague sounds of a summer afternoon were blended; yes, and had it
+not laughed and evaded me in many a nameless gleam at other moments?
+
+
+
+9
+
+
+I think I shall stop startled if ever we meet after our next birth, walking
+in the light of a far-away world.
+
+I shall know those dark eyes then as morning stars, and yet feel that they
+have belonged to some unremembered evening sky of a former life.
+
+I shall know that the magic of your face is not all its own, but has stolen
+the passionate light that was in my eyes at some immemorial meeting, and
+then gathered from my love a mystery that has now forgotten its origin.
+
+
+
+10
+
+
+Lay down your lute, my love, leave your arms free to embrace me.
+
+Let your touch bring my overflowing heart to my body's utmost brink.
+
+Do not bend your neck and turn away your face, but offer up a kiss to me,
+which has been like some perfume long closed in a bud.
+
+Do not smother this moment under vain words, but let our hearts quake in a
+rush of silence sweeping all thoughts to the shoreless delight.
+
+
+
+11
+
+
+You have made me great with your love, though I am but one among the many,
+drifting in the common tide, rocking in the fluctuant favour of the world.
+
+You have given me a seat where poets of all time bring their tribute, and
+lovers with deathless names greet one another across the ages.
+
+Men hastily pass me in the market,--never noting how my body has grown
+precious with your caress, how I carry your kiss within, as the sun carries
+in its orb the fire of the divine touch and shines for ever.
+
+
+
+12
+
+
+Like a child that frets and pushes away its toys, my heart to-day shakes
+its head at every phrase I suggest, and says, "No, not this."
+
+Yet words, in the agony of their vagueness, haunt my mind, like vagrant
+clouds hovering over hills, waiting for some chance wind to relieve them of
+their rain.
+
+
+But leave these vain efforts, my soul, for the stillness will ripen its own
+music in the dark.
+
+My life to-day is like a cloister during some penance, where the spring is
+afraid to stir or to whisper.
+
+This is not the time, my love, for you to pass the gate; at the mere
+thought of your anklet bells tinkling down the path, the garden echoes are
+ashamed.
+
+Know that to-morrow's songs are in bud to-day, and should they see you walk
+by they would strain to breaking their immature hearts.
+
+
+
+13
+
+
+Whence do you bring this disquiet, my love?
+
+Let my heart touch yours and kiss the pain out of your silence.
+
+The night has thrown up from its depth this little hour, that love may
+build a new world within these shut doors, to be lighted by this solitary
+lamp.
+
+We have for music but a single reed which our two pairs of lips must play
+on by turns--for crown, only one garland to bind my hair after I have put
+it on your forehead.
+
+Tearing the veil from my breast I shall make our bed on the floor; and one
+kiss and one sleep of delight shall fill our small boundless world.
+
+
+
+14
+
+
+All that I had I gave to you, keeping but the barest veil of reserve.
+
+It is so thin that you secretly smile at it and I feel ashamed.
+
+The gust of the spring breeze sweeps it away unawares, and the flutter of
+my own heart moves it as the waves move their foam.
+
+My love, do not grieve if I keep this flimsy mist of distance round me.
+
+This frail reserve of mine is no mere woman's coyness, but a slender stem
+on which the flower of my self-surrender bends towards you with reticent
+grace.
+
+
+
+15
+
+
+I have donned this new robe to-day because my body feels like singing.
+
+It is not enough that I am given to my love once and for ever, but out of
+that I must fashion new gifts every day; and shall I not seem a fresh
+offering, dressed in a new robe?
+
+My heart, like the evening sky, has its endless passion for colour, and
+therefore I change my veils, which have now the green of the cool young
+grass and now that of the winter rice.
+
+To-day my robe is tinted with the rain-rimmed blue of the sky. It brings to
+my limbs the colour of the boundless, the colour of the oversea hills; and
+it carries in its folds the delight of summer clouds flying in the wind.
+
+
+
+16
+
+
+I thought I would write love's words in their own colour; but that lies
+deep in the heart, and tears are pale.
+
+Would you know them, friend, if the words were colourless?
+
+I thought I would sing love's words to their own tune, but that sounds only
+in my heart, and my eyes are silent.
+
+Would you know them, friend, if there were no tune?
+
+
+
+17
+
+
+In the night the song came to me; but you were not there.
+
+It found the words for which I had been seeking all day. Yes, in the
+stillness a moment after dark they throbbed into music, even as the stars
+then began to pulse with light; but you were not there. My hope was to sing
+it to you in the morning; but, try as I might, though the music came, the
+words hung back, when you were beside me.
+
+
+
+18
+
+
+The night deepens and the dying flame flickers in the lamp.
+
+I forgot to notice when the evening--like a village girl who has filled her
+pitcher at the river a last time for that day--closed the door on her
+cabin.
+
+I was speaking to you, my love, with mind barely conscious of my
+voice--tell me, had it any meaning? Did it bring you any message from
+beyond life's borders?
+
+For now, since my voice has ceased, I feel the night throbbing with
+thoughts that gaze in awe at the abyss of their dumbness.
+
+
+
+19
+
+
+When we two first met my heart rang out in music, "She who is eternally
+afar is beside you for ever."
+
+That music is silent, because I have grown to believe that my love is only
+near, and have forgotten that she is also far, far away.
+
+Music fills the infinite between two souls. This has been muffled by the
+mist of our daily habits.
+
+On shy summer nights, when the breeze brings a vast murmur out of the
+silence, I sit up in my bed and mourn the great loss of her who is beside
+me. I ask myself, "When shall I have another chance to whisper to her words
+with the rhythm of eternity in them?"
+
+Wake up, my song, from thy languor, rend this screen of the familiar, and
+fly to my beloved there, in the endless surprise of our first meeting!
+
+
+
+20
+
+
+Lovers come to you, my Queen, and proudly lay their riches at your feet:
+but my tribute is made up of unfulfilled hopes.
+
+Shadows have stolen across the heart of my world and the best in me has
+lost light.
+
+While the fortunate laugh at my penury, I ask you to lend my failings your
+tears, and so make them precious.
+
+
+I bring you a voiceless instrument.
+
+I strained to reach a note which was too high in my heart, and the string
+broke.
+
+While masters laugh at the snapped cord, I ask you to take my lute in your
+hands and fill its hollowness with your songs.
+
+
+
+21
+
+
+The father came back from the funeral rites.
+
+His boy of seven stood at the window, with eyes wide open and a golden
+amulet hanging from his neck, full of thoughts too difficult for his age.
+
+His father took him in his arms and the boy asked him, "Where is mother?"
+
+"In heaven," answered his father, pointing to the sky.
+
+
+At night the father groaned in slumber, weary with grief.
+
+A lamp dimly burned near the bedroom door, and a lizard chased moths on the
+wall.
+
+The boy woke up from sleep, felt with his hands the emptiness in the bed,
+and stole out to the open terrace.
+
+The boy raised his eyes to the sky and long gazed in silence. His
+bewildered mind sent abroad into the night the question, "Where is heaven?"
+
+No answer came: and the stars seemed like the burning tears of that
+ignorant darkness.
+
+
+
+22
+
+
+She went away when the night was about to wane.
+
+My mind tried to console me by saying, "All is vanity."
+
+I felt angry and said, "That unopened letter with her name on it, and this
+palm-leaf fan bordered with red silk by her own hands, are they not real?"
+
+The day passed, and my friend came and said to me, "Whatever is good is
+true, and can never perish."
+
+"How do you know?" I asked impatiently; "was not this body good which is
+now lost to the world?"
+
+
+As a fretful child hurting its own mother, I tried to wreck all the
+shelters that ever I had, in and about me, and cried, "This world is
+treacherous."
+
+Suddenly I felt a voice saying--"Ungrateful!"
+
+I looked out of the window, and a reproach seemed to come from the
+star-sprinkled night,--"You pour out into the void of my absence your faith
+in the truth that I came!"
+
+
+
+23
+
+
+The river is grey and the air dazed with blown sand.
+
+On a morning of dark disquiet, when the birds are mute and their nests
+shake in the gust, I sit alone and ask myself, "Where is she?"
+
+The days have flown wherein we sat too near each other; we laughed and
+jested, and the awe of love's majesty found no words at our meetings.
+
+I made myself small, and she trifled away every moment with pelting talk.
+
+To-day I wish in vain that she were by me, in the gloom of the coming
+storm, to sit in the soul's solitude.
+
+
+
+24
+
+
+The name she called me by, like a flourishing jasmine, covered the whole
+seventeen years of our love. With its sound mingled the quiver of the light
+through the leaves, the scent of the grass in the rainy night, and the sad
+silence of the last hour of many an idle day.
+
+Not the work of God alone was he who answered to that name; she created him
+again for herself during those seventeen swift years.
+
+Other years were to follow, but their vagrant days, no longer gathered
+within the fold of that name uttered in her voice, stray and are scattered.
+
+They ask me, "Who should fold us?"
+
+I find no answer and sit silent, and they cry to me while dispersing, "We
+seek a shepherdess!"
+
+Whom should they seek?
+
+That they do not know. And like derelict evening clouds they drift in the
+trackless dark, and are lost and forgotten.
+
+
+
+25
+
+
+I feel that your brief days of love have not been left behind in those
+scanty years of your life.
+
+I seek to know in what place, away from the slow-thieving dust, you keep
+them now. I find in my solitude some song of your evening that died, yet
+left a deathless echo; and the sighs of your unsatisfied hours I find
+nestled in the warm quiet of the autumn noon.
+
+Your desires come from the hive of the past to haunt my heart, and I sit
+still to listen to their wings.
+
+
+
+26
+
+
+You have taken a bath in the dark sea. You are once again veiled in a
+bride's robe, and through death's arch you come back to repeat our wedding
+in the soul.
+
+Neither lute nor drum is struck, no crowd has gathered, not a wreath is
+hung on the gate.
+
+Your unuttered words meet mine in a ritual unillumined by lamps.
+
+
+
+27
+
+
+I was walking along a path overgrown with grass, when suddenly I heard from
+some one behind, "See if you know me?"
+
+I turned round and looked at her and said, "I cannot remember your name."
+
+She said, "I am that first great Sorrow whom you met when you were young."
+
+Her eyes looked like a morning whose dew is still in the air.
+
+I stood silent for some time till I said, "Have you lost all the great
+burden of your tears?"
+
+She smiled and said nothing. I felt that her tears had had time to learn
+the language of smiles.
+
+"Once you said," she whispered, "that you would cherish your grief for
+ever."
+
+I blushed and said, "Yes, but years have passed and I forget."
+
+Then I took her hand in mine and said, "But you have changed."
+
+"What was sorrow once has now become peace," she said.
+
+
+
+28
+
+
+Our life sails on the uncrossed sea whose waves chase each other in an
+eternal hide-and-seek.
+
+It is the restless sea of change, feeding its foaming flocks to lose them
+over and over again, beating its hands against the calm of the sky.
+
+Love, in the centre of this circling war-dance of light and dark, yours is
+that green island, where the sun kisses the shy forest shade and silence is
+wooed by birds' singing.
+
+
+
+29
+
+AMA AND VINAYAKA
+
+
+AMA AND VINAYAKA
+
+_Night on the battlefield:_ AMA _meets her father_ VINAYAKA.
+
+
+AMA
+
+Father!
+
+
+VINAYAKA
+
+Shameless wanton, you call me "Father"! you who did not shrink from a
+Mussulman husband!
+
+
+AMA
+
+Though you have treacherously killed my husband, yet you are my father; and
+I hold back a widow's tears, lest they bring God's curse on you. Since we
+have met on this battlefield after years of separation, let me bow to your
+feet and take my last leave!
+
+
+VINAYAKA
+
+Where will you go, Ama? The tree on which you built your impious nest is
+hewn down. Where will _you_ take shelter?
+
+
+AMA
+
+I have my son.
+
+
+VINAYAKA
+
+Leave him! Cast never a fond look back on the result of a sin expiated with
+blood! Think where to go.
+
+
+AMA
+
+Death's open gates are wider than a father's love!
+
+
+VINAYAKA
+
+Death indeed swallows sins as the sea swallows the mud of rivers. But you
+are to die neither to-night nor here. Seek some solitary shrine of holy
+Shiva far from shamed kindred and all neighbours; bathe three times a day
+in sacred Ganges, and, while reciting God's name, listen to the last bell
+of evening worship, that Death may look tenderly upon you, as a father on
+his sleeping child whose eyes are still wet with tears. Let him gently
+carry you into his own great silence, as the Ganges carries a fallen flower
+on its stream, washing every stain away to render it, a fit offering, to
+the sea.
+
+
+AMA
+
+But my son----
+
+
+VINAYAKA
+
+Again I bid you not to speak of him. Lay yourself once more in a father's
+arms, my child, like a babe fresh from the womb of Oblivion, your second
+mother.
+
+
+AMA
+
+To me the world has become a shadow. Your words I hear, but cannot take to
+heart. Leave me, father, leave me alone! Do not try to bind me with your
+love, for its bands are red with my husband's blood.
+
+
+VINAYAKA
+
+Alas! no flower ever returns to the parent branch it dropped from. How can
+you call him _husband_ who forcibly snatched you from Jivaji to whom you
+had been sacredly affianced? I shall never forget that night! In the
+wedding hall we sat anxiously expecting the bridegroom, for the auspicious
+hour was dwindling away. Then in the distance appeared the glare of
+torches, and bridal strains came floating up the air. We shouted for joy:
+women blew their conch-shells. A procession of palanquins entered the
+courtyard: but while we were asking, "Where is Jivaji?" armed men burst out
+of the litters like a storm, and bore you off before we knew what had
+happened. Shortly after, Jivaji came to tell us he had been waylaid and
+captured by a Mussulman noble of the Vijapur court. That night Jivaji and I
+touched the nuptial fire and swore bloody death to this villain. After
+waiting long, we have been freed from our solemn pledge to-night; and the
+spirit of Jivaji, who lost his life in this battle, lawfully claims you for
+wife.
+
+
+AMA
+
+Father, it may be that I have disgraced the rites of your house, but my
+honour is unsullied; I loved him to whom I bore a son. I remember the night
+when I received two secret messages, one from you, one from my mother;
+yours said: "I send you the knife; kill him!" My mother's: "I send you the
+poison; end your life!" Had unholy force dishonoured me, your double
+bidding had been obeyed. But my body was yielded only after love had given
+_me_--love all the greater, all the purer, in that it overcame the
+hereditary recoil of our blood from the Mussulman.
+
+_Enter_ RAMA, AMA'S _mother_
+
+
+AMA
+
+Mother mine, I had not hoped to see you again. Let me take dust from your
+feet.
+
+
+RAMA
+
+Touch me not with impure hands!
+
+
+AMA
+
+I am as pure as yourself.
+
+
+RAMA
+
+To whom have you surrendered your honour?
+
+
+AMA
+
+To my husband.
+
+
+RAMA
+
+Husband? A Mussulman the husband of a Brahmin woman?
+
+
+AMA
+
+I do not merit contempt: I am proud to say I never despised my husband
+though a Mussulman. If Paradise will reward your devotion to your husband,
+then the same Paradise waits for your daughter, who has been as true a
+wife.
+
+
+RAMA
+
+Are you indeed a true wife?
+
+
+AMA
+
+Yes.
+
+
+RAMA
+
+Do you know how to die without flinching?
+
+
+AMA
+
+I do.
+
+
+RAMA
+
+Then let the funeral fire be lighted for you! See, there lies the body of
+your husband.
+
+
+AMA
+
+Jivaji?
+
+
+RAMA
+
+Yes, Jivaji. He was your husband by plighted troth. The baffled fire of the
+nuptial God has raged into the hungry fire of death, and the interrupted
+wedding shall be completed now.
+
+
+VINAYAKA
+
+Do not listen, my child. Go back to your son, to your own nest darkened
+with sorrow. My duty has been performed to its extreme cruel end, and
+nothing now remains for you to do.--Wife, your grief is fruitless. Were the
+branch dead which was violently snapped from our tree, I should give it to
+the fire. But it has sent living roots into a new soil and is bearing
+flowers and fruits. Allow her, without regret, to obey the laws of those
+among whom she has loved. Come, wife, it is time we cut all worldly ties
+and spent our remainder lives in the seclusion of some peaceful pilgrim
+shrine.
+
+
+RAMA
+
+I am ready: but first must tread into dust every sprout of sin and shame
+that has sprung from the soil of our life. A daughter's infamy stains her
+mother's honour. That black shame shall feed glowing fire to-night, and
+raise a true wife's memorial over the ashes of my daughter.
+
+
+AMA
+
+Mother, if by force you unite me in death with one who was not my husband,
+then will you bring a curse upon yourself for desecrating the shrine of the
+Eternal Lord of Death.
+
+
+RAMA
+
+Soldiers, light the fire; surround the woman!
+
+
+AMA
+
+Father!
+
+
+VINAYAKA
+
+Do not fear. Alas, my child, that you should ever have to call your father
+to save you from your mother's hands!
+
+
+AMA
+
+Father!
+
+
+VINAYAKA
+
+Come to me, my darling child! Mere vanity are these man-made laws,
+splashing like spray against the rock of heaven's ordinance. Bring your son
+to me, and we will live together, my daughter. A father's love, like God's
+rain, does not judge but is poured forth from an abounding source.
+
+
+RAMA
+
+Where would you go? Turn back!--Soldiers, stand firm in your loyalty to
+your master Jivaji! do your last sacred duty by him!
+
+
+AMA
+
+Father!
+
+
+VINAYAKA
+
+Free her, soldiers! She is my daughter.
+
+
+SOLDIERS
+
+She is the widow of our master.
+
+
+VINAYAKA
+
+Her husband, though a Mussulman, was staunch in his own faith.
+
+
+RAMA
+
+Soldiers, keep this old man under control!
+
+
+AMA
+
+I defy you, mother!--You, soldiers, I defy!--for through death and love I
+win to freedom.
+
+
+
+30
+
+
+A painter was selling pictures at the fair; followed by servants, there
+passed the son of a minister who in youth had cheated this painter's father
+so that he had died of a broken heart.
+
+The boy lingered before the pictures and chose one for himself. The painter
+flung a cloth over it and said he would not sell it.
+
+After this the boy pined heart-sick till his father came and offered a
+large price. But the painter kept the picture unsold on his shop-wall and
+grimly sat before it, saying to himself, "This is my revenge."
+
+
+The sole form this painter's worship took was to trace an image of his god
+every morning.
+
+And now he felt these pictures grow daily more different from those he used
+to paint.
+
+This troubled him, and he sought in vain for an explanation till one day he
+started up from work in horror, the eyes of the god he had just drawn were
+those of the minister, and so were the lips.
+
+He tore up the picture, crying, "My revenge has returned on my head!"
+
+
+
+31
+
+
+The General came before the silent and angry King and saluting him said:
+"The village is punished, the men are stricken to dust, and the women cower
+in their unlit homes afraid to weep aloud."
+
+The High Priest stood up and blessed the King and cried: "God's mercy is
+ever upon you."
+
+The Clown, when he heard this, burst out laughing and startled the court.
+The King's frown darkened.
+
+"The honour of the throne," said the minister, "is upheld by the King's
+prowess and the blessing of Almighty God."
+
+Louder laughed the Clown, and the King growled,--"Unseemly mirth!"
+
+"God has showered many blessings upon your head," said the Clown; "the one
+he bestowed on me was the gift of laughter."
+
+"This gift will cost you your life," said the King, gripping his sword with
+his right hand.
+
+Yet the Clown stood up and laughed till he laughed no more.
+
+A shadow of dread fell upon the Court, for they heard that laughter echoing
+in the depth of God's silence.
+
+
+
+32
+
+THE MOTHER'S PRAYER
+
+
+THE MOTHER'S PRAYER
+
+_Prince Duryodhana, the son of the blind Kaurava King Dhritarashtra, and of
+Queen Gandhari, has played with his cousins the Pandava Kings for their
+kingdom, and won it by fraud._
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+You have compassed your end.
+
+
+DURYODHANA
+
+Success is mine!
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+Are you happy?
+
+
+DURYODHANA
+
+I am victorious.
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+I ask you again, what happiness have you in winning the undivided kingdom?
+
+
+DURYODHANA
+
+Sire, a Kshatriya thirsts not after happiness but victory, that fiery wine
+pressed from seething jealousy. Wretchedly happy we were, like those
+inglorious stains that lie idly on the breast of the moon, when we lived in
+peace under the friendly dominance of our cousins. Then these Pandavas
+milked the world of its wealth, and allowed us a share, in brotherly
+tolerance. Now that they own defeat and expect banishment, I am no longer
+happy but exultant.
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+Wretch, you forget that both Pandavas and Kauravas have the same
+forefathers.
+
+
+DURYODHANA
+
+It was difficult to forget that, and therefore our inequalities rankled in
+my heart. At midnight the moon is never jealous of the noonday sun. But the
+struggle to share one horizon between both orbs cannot last forever. Thank
+heaven, that struggle is over, and we have at last won solitude in glory.
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+The mean jealousy!
+
+
+DURYODHANA
+
+Jealousy is never mean--it is in the essence of greatness. Grass can grow
+in crowded amity, not giant trees. Stars live in clusters, but the sun and
+moon are lonely in their splendour. The pale moon of the Pandavas sets
+behind the forest shadows, leaving the new-risen sun of the Kauravas to
+rejoice.
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+But right has been defeated.
+
+
+DURYODHANA
+
+Right for rulers is not what is right in the eyes of the people. The people
+thrive by comradeship: but for a king, equals are enemies. They are
+obstacles ahead, they are terrors from behind. There is no place for
+brothers or friends in a king's polity; its one solid foundation is
+conquest.
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+I refuse to call a conquest what was won by fraud in gambling.
+
+
+DURYODHANA
+
+A man is not shamed by refusing to challenge a tiger on equal terms with
+teeth and nails. Our weapons are those proper for success, not for suicide.
+Father, I am proud of the result and disdain regret for the means.
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+But justice----
+
+
+DURYODHANA
+
+Fools alone dream of justice--success is not yet theirs: but those born to
+rule rely on power, merciless and unhampered with scruples.
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+Your success will bring down on you a loud and angry flood of detraction.
+
+
+DURYODHANA
+
+The people will take amazingly little time to learn that Duryodhana is king
+and has power to crush calumny under foot.
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+Calumny dies of weariness dancing on tongue-tips. Do not drive it into the
+heart to gather strength.
+
+
+DURYODHANA
+
+Unuttered defamation does not touch a king's dignity. I care not if love is
+refused us, but insolence shall not be borne. Love depends upon the will of
+the giver, and the poorest of the poor can indulge in such generosity. Let
+them squander it on their pet cats, tame dogs, and our good cousins the
+Pandavas. I shall never envy them. Fear is the tribute I claim for my royal
+throne. Father, only too leniently you lent your ear to those who slandered
+your sons: but if you intend still to allow those pious friends of yours to
+revel in shrill denunciation at the expense of your children, let us
+exchange our kingdom for the exile of our cousins, and go to the
+wilderness, where happily friends are never cheap!
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+Could the pious warnings of my friends lessen my love for my sons, then we
+might be saved. But I have dipped my hands in the mire of your infamy and
+lost my sense of goodness. For your sakes I have heedlessly set fire to the
+ancient forest of our royal lineage--so dire is my love. Clasped breast to
+breast, we, like a double meteor, are blindly plunging into ruin. Therefore
+doubt not my love; relax not your embrace till the brink of annihilation be
+reached. Beat your drums of victory, lift your banner of triumph. In this
+mad riot of exultant evil, brothers and friends will disperse till nothing
+remain save the doomed father, the doomed son and God's curse.
+
+
+_Enter an Attendant_
+
+Sire, Queen Gandhari asks for audience.
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+I await her.
+
+
+DURYODHANA
+
+Let me take my leave. [_Exit._
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+Fly! For you cannot bear the fire of your mother's presence.
+
+
+_Enter_ QUEEN GANDHARI, _the mother of_ DURYODHANA
+
+
+GANDHARI
+
+At your feet I crave a boon.
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+Speak, your wish is fulfilled.
+
+
+GANDHARI
+
+The time has come to renounce him.
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+Whom, my queen?
+
+
+GANDHARI
+
+Duryodhana!
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+Our own son, Duryodhana?
+
+
+GANDHARI
+
+Yes!
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+This is a terrible boon for you, his mother, to crave!
+
+
+GANDHARI
+
+The fathers of the Kauravas, who are in Paradise, join me in beseeching
+you.
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+The divine Judge will punish him who has broken His laws. But I am his
+father.
+
+
+GANDHARI
+
+Am I not his mother? Have I not carried him under my throbbing heart? Yes,
+I ask you to renounce Duryodhana the unrighteous.
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+What will remain to us after that?
+
+
+GANDHARI
+
+God's blessing.
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+And what will that bring us?
+
+
+GANDHARI
+
+New afflictions. Pleasure in our son's presence, pride in a new kingdom,
+and shame at knowing both purchased by wrong done or connived at, like
+thorns dragged two ways, would lacerate our bosoms. The Pandavas are too
+proud ever to accept back from us the lands which they have relinquished;
+therefore it is only meet that we draw some great sorrow down on our heads
+so as to deprive that unmerited reward of its sting.
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+Queen, you inflict fresh pain on a heart already rent.
+
+
+GANDHARI
+
+Sire, the punishment imposed on our son will be more ours than his. A judge
+callous to the pain that he inflicts loses the right to judge. And if you
+spare your son to save yourself pain, then all the culprits ever punished
+by your hands will cry before God's throne for vengeance,--had they not
+also their fathers?
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+No more of this, Queen, I pray you. Our son is abandoned of God: that is
+why I cannot give him up. To save him is no longer in my power, and
+therefore my consolation is to share his guilt and tread the path of
+destruction, his solitary companion. What is done is done; let follow what
+must follow!                            [_Exit._
+
+
+GANDHARI
+
+Be calm, my heart, and patiently await God's judgment. Oblivious night
+wears on, the morning of reckoning nears, I hear the thundering roar of its
+chariot. Woman, bow your head down to the dust! and as a sacrifice fling
+your heart under those wheels! Darkness will shroud the sky, earth will
+tremble, wailing will rend the air and then comes the silent and cruel
+end,--that terrible peace, that great forgetting, and awful extinction of
+hatred--the supreme deliverance rising from the fire of death.
+
+
+
+33
+
+
+Fiercely they rend in pieces the carpet woven during ages of prayer for the
+welcome of the world's best hope.
+
+The great preparations of love lie a heap of shreds, and there is nothing
+on the ruined altar to remind the mad crowd that their god was to have
+come. In a fury of passion they seem to have burnt their future to cinders,
+and with it the season of their bloom.
+
+The air is harsh with the cry, "Victory to the Brute!" The children look
+haggard and aged; they whisper to one another that time revolves but never
+advances, that we are goaded to run but have nothing to reach, that
+creation is like a blind man's groping.
+
+I said to myself, "Cease thy singing. Song is for one who is to come, the
+struggle without an end is for things that are."
+
+The road, that ever lies along like some one with ear to the ground
+listening for footsteps, to-day gleans no hint of coming guest, nothing of
+the house at its far end.
+
+My lute said, "Trample me in the dust."
+
+I looked at the dust by the roadside. There was a tiny flower among thorns.
+And I cried, "The world's hope is not dead!"
+
+The sky stooped over the horizon to whisper to the earth, and a hush of
+expectation filled the air. I saw the palm leaves clapping their hands to
+the beat of inaudible music, and the moon exchanged glances with the
+glistening silence of the lake.
+
+The road said to me, "Fear nothing!" and my lute said, "Lend me thy songs!"
+
+
+
+34
+
+TRANSLATIONS
+
+
+BAUL SONGS[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: The Bauls are a sect of religious mendicants in Bengal,
+unlettered and unconventional, whose songs are loved and sung by the
+people. The literal meaning of the word "Baul" is "the Mad."]
+
+
+
+1
+
+
+This longing to meet in the play of love, my Lover, is not only mine but
+yours.
+
+Your lips can smile, your flute make music, only through delight in my
+love; therefore you are importunate even as I.
+
+
+
+2
+
+
+I sit here on the road; do not ask me to walk further.
+
+If your love can be complete without mine let me turn back from seeking
+you.
+
+I refuse to beg a sight of you if you do not feel my need.
+
+I am blind with market dust and mid-day glare, and so wait, in hopes that
+your heart, my heart's lover, will send you to find me.
+
+
+
+3
+
+
+I am poured forth in living notes of joy and sorrow by your breath.
+
+Mornings and evenings in summer and in rains, I am fashioned to music.
+
+Should I be wholly spent in some flight of song, I shall not grieve, the
+tune is so dear to me.
+
+
+
+4
+
+
+My heart is a flute he has played on. If ever it fall into other hands let
+him fling it away.
+
+My lover's flute is dear to him, therefore if to-day alien breath have
+entered it and sounded strange notes, let him break it to pieces and strew
+the dust with them.
+
+
+
+5
+
+
+In love the aim is neither pain nor pleasure but love only.
+
+While free love binds, division destroys it, for love is what unites.
+
+Love is lit from love as fire from fire, but whence came the first flame?
+
+In your being it leaps under the rod of pain.
+
+Then, when the hidden fire flames forth, the in and the out are one and all
+barriers fall in ashes.
+
+Let the pain glow fiercely, burst from the heart and beat back darkness,
+need you be afraid?
+
+The poet says, "Who can buy love without paying its price? When you fail to
+give yourself you make the whole world miserly."
+
+
+
+6
+
+
+Eyes see only dust and earth, but feel with the heart, and know pure joy.
+
+The delights blossom on all sides in every form, but where is your heart's
+thread to make a wreath of them?
+
+My master's flute sounds through all things, drawing me out of my lodgings
+wherever they may be, and while I listen I know that every step I take is
+in my master's house.
+
+For he is the sea, he is the river that leads to the sea, and he is the
+landing-place.
+
+
+
+7
+
+
+Strange ways has my guest.
+
+He comes at times when I am unprepared, yet how can I refuse him?
+
+I watch all night with lighted lamp; he stays away; when the light goes out
+and the room is bare he comes claiming his seat, and can I keep him
+waiting?
+
+I laugh and make merry with friends, then suddenly I start up, for lo! he
+passes me by in sorrow, and I know my mirth was vain.
+
+I have often seen a smile in his eyes when my heart ached, then I knew my
+sorrow was not real.
+
+Yet I never complain when I do not understand him.
+
+
+
+8
+
+
+I am the boat, you are the sea, and also the boatman.
+
+Though you never make the shore, though you let me sink, why should I be
+foolish and afraid?
+
+Is reaching the shore a greater prize than losing myself with you?
+
+If you are only the haven, as they say, then what is the sea?
+
+Let it surge and toss me on its waves, I shall be content.
+
+I live in you whatever and however you appear. Save me or kill me as you
+wish, only never leave me in other hands.
+
+
+
+9
+
+
+Make way, O bud, make way, burst open thy heart and make way.
+
+The opening spirit has overtaken thee, canst thou remain a bud any longer?
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+
+1
+
+
+Come, Spring, reckless lover of the earth, make the forest's heart pant for
+utterance!
+
+Come in gusts of disquiet where flowers break open and jostle the new
+leaves!
+
+Burst, like a rebellion of light, through the night's vigil, through the
+lake's dark dumbness, through the dungeon under the dust, proclaiming
+freedom to the shackled seeds!
+
+Like the laughter of lightning, like the shout of a storm, break into the
+midst of the noisy town; free stifled word and unconscious effort,
+reinforce our flagging fight, and conquer death!
+
+
+
+2
+
+
+I have looked on this picture in many a month of March when the mustard is
+in bloom--this lazy line of the water and the grey of the sand beyond, the
+rough path along the river-bank carrying the comradeship of the field into
+the heart of the village.
+
+I have tried to capture in rhyme the idle whistle of the wind, the beat of
+the oar-strokes from a passing boat.
+
+I have wondered in my mind how simply it stands before me, this great
+world: with what fond and familiar ease it fills my heart, this encounter
+with the Eternal Stranger.
+
+
+
+3
+
+
+The ferry-boat plies between the two villages facing each other across the
+narrow stream.
+
+The water is neither wide nor deep--a mere break in the path that enhances
+the small adventures of daily life, like a break in the words of a song
+across which the tune gleefully streams.
+
+While the towers of wealth rise high and crash to ruin, these villages talk
+to each other across the garrulous stream, and the ferry-boat plies between
+them, age after age, from seed-time to harvest.
+
+
+
+4
+
+
+In the evening after they have brought their cattle home, they sit on the
+grass before their huts to know that you are among them unseen, to repeat
+in their songs the name which they have fondly given you.
+
+While kings' crowns shine and disappear like falling stars, around village
+huts your name rises through the still night from the simple hearts of your
+lovers whose names are unrecorded.
+
+
+
+5
+
+
+In Baby's world, the trees shake their leaves at him, murmuring verses in
+an ancient tongue that dates from before the age of meaning, and the moon
+feigns to be of his own age--the solitary baby of night.
+
+In the world of the old, flowers dutifully blush at the make-believe of
+faery legends, and broken dolls confess that they are made of clay.
+
+
+
+6
+
+
+_My world_, when I was a child, you were a little girl-neighbour, a loving
+timid stranger.
+
+Then you grew bold and talked to me across the fence, offering me toys and
+flowers and shells.
+
+Next you coaxed me away from my work, you tempted me into the land of the
+dusk or the weedy corner of some garden in mid-day loneliness.
+
+At length you told me stories about bygone times, with which the present
+ever longs to meet so as to be rescued from its prison in the moment.
+
+
+
+7
+
+
+How often, great Earth, have I felt my being yearn to flow over you,
+sharing in the happiness of each green blade that raises its signal banner
+in answer to the beckoning blue of the sky!
+
+I feel as if I had belonged to you ages before I was born. That is why, in
+the days when the autumn light shimmers on the mellowing ears of rice, I
+seem to remember a past when my mind was everywhere, and even to hear
+voices as of playfellows echoing from the remote and deeply veiled past.
+
+When, in the evening, the cattle return to their folds, raising dust from
+the meadow paths, as the moon rises higher than the smoke ascending from
+the village huts, I feel sad as for some great separation that happened in
+the first morning of existence.
+
+
+
+8
+
+
+My mind still buzzed with the cares of a busy day; I sat on without noting
+how twilight was deepening into dark. Suddenly light stirred across the
+gloom and touched me as with a finger.
+
+I lifted my head and met the gaze of the full moon widened in wonder like a
+child's. It held my eyes for long, and I felt as though a love-letter had
+been secretly dropped in at my window. And ever since my heart is breaking
+to write for answer something fragrant as Night's unseen flowers--great as
+her declaration spelt out in nameless stars.
+
+
+
+9
+
+
+The clouds thicken till the morning light seems like a bedraggled fringe to
+the rainy night.
+
+A little girl stands at her window, still as a rainbow at the gate of a
+broken-down storm.
+
+She is my neighbour, and has come upon the earth like some god's rebellious
+laughter. Her mother in anger calls her incorrigible; her father smiles and
+calls her mad.
+
+She is like a runaway waterfall leaping over boulders, like the topmost
+bamboo twig rustling in the restless wind.
+
+She stands at her window looking out into the sky.
+
+Her sister comes to say, "Mother calls you." She shakes her head.
+
+Her little brother with his toy boat comes and tries to pull her off to
+play; she snatches her hand from his. The boy persists and she gives him a
+slap on the back.
+
+The first great voice was the voice of wind and water in the beginning of
+earth's creation.
+
+That ancient cry of nature--her dumb call to unborn life--has reached this
+child's heart and leads it out alone beyond the fence of our times: so
+there she stands, possessed by eternity!
+
+
+
+10
+
+
+The kingfisher sits still on the prow of an empty boat, while in the
+shallow margin of the stream a buffalo lies tranquilly blissful, its eyes
+half closed to savour the luxury of cool mud.
+
+Undismayed by the barking of the village cur, the cow browses on the bank,
+followed by a hopping group of _saliks_ hunting moths.
+
+I sit in the tamarind grove, where the cries of dumb life congregate--the
+cattle's lowing, the sparrows' chatter, the shrill scream of a kite
+overhead, the crickets' chirp, and the splash of a fish in the water.
+
+I peep into the primeval nursery of life, where the mother Earth thrills at
+the first living clutch near her breast.
+
+
+
+11
+
+
+At the sleepy village the noon was still like a sunny midnight when my
+holidays came to their end.
+
+My little girl of four had followed me all the morning from room to room,
+watching my preparations in grave silence, till, wearied, she sat by the
+doorpost strangely quiet, murmuring to herself, "Father must not go!"
+
+This was the meal hour, when sleep daily overcame her, but her mother had
+forgotten her and the child was too unhappy to complain.
+
+At last, when I stretched out my arms to her to say farewell, she never
+moved, but sadly looking at me said, "Father, you must not go!"
+
+And it amused me to tears to think how this little child dared to fight the
+giant world of necessity with no other resource than those few words,
+"Father, you must not go!"
+
+
+
+12
+
+
+Take your holiday, my boy; there are the blue sky and the bare field, the
+barn and the ruined temple under the ancient tamarind.
+
+My holiday must be taken through yours, finding light in the dance of your
+eyes, music in your noisy shouts.
+
+To you autumn brings the true holiday freedom: to me it brings the
+impossibility of work; for lo! you burst into my room.
+
+Yes, my holiday is an endless freedom for love to disturb me.
+
+
+
+13
+
+
+In the evening my little daughter heard a call from her companions below
+the window.
+
+She timidly went down the dark stairs holding a lamp in her hand, shielding
+it behind her veil.
+
+I was sitting on my terrace in the star-lit night of March, when at a
+sudden cry I ran to see.
+
+Her lamp had gone out in the dark spiral staircase. I asked, "Child, why
+did you cry?"
+
+From below she answered in distress, "Father, I have lost myself!"
+
+When I came back to the terrace under the star-lit night of March, I looked
+at the sky, and it seemed that a child was walking there treasuring many
+lamps behind her veils.
+
+If their light went out, she would suddenly stop and a cry would sound from
+sky to sky, "Father, I have lost myself!"
+
+
+
+14
+
+
+The evening stood bewildered among street lamps, its gold tarnished by the
+city dust.
+
+A woman, gaudily decked and painted, leant over the rail of her balcony, a
+living fire waiting for its moths.
+
+Suddenly an eddy was formed in the road round a street-boy crushed under
+the wheels of a carriage, and the woman on the balcony fell to the floor
+screaming in agony, stricken with the grief of the great white-robed Mother
+who sits in the world's inner shrine.
+
+
+
+15
+
+
+I remember the scene on the barren heath--a girl sat alone on the grass
+before the gipsy camp, braiding her hair in the afternoon shade.
+
+Her little dog jumped and barked at her busy hands, as though her
+employment had no importance.
+
+In vain did she rebuke it, calling it "a pest," saying she was tired of its
+perpetual silliness.
+
+She struck it on the nose with her reproving forefinger, which only seemed
+to delight it the more.
+
+She looked menacingly grave for a few moments, to warn it of impending
+doom; and then, letting her hair fall, quickly snatched it up in her arms,
+laughed, and pressed it to her heart.
+
+
+
+16
+
+
+He is tall and lean, withered to the bone with long repeated fever, like a
+dead tree unable to draw a single drop of sap from anywhere.
+
+In despairing patience, his mother carries him like a child into the sun,
+where he sits by the roadside in the shortening shadows of each forenoon.
+
+The world passes by--a woman to fetch water, a herd-boy with cattle to
+pasture, a laden cart to the distant market--and the mother hopes that some
+least stir of life may touch the awful torpor of her dying son.
+
+
+
+17
+
+
+If the ragged villager, trudging home from the market, could suddenly be
+lifted to the crest of a distant age, men would stop in their work and
+shout and run to him in delight.
+
+For they would no longer whittle down the man into the peasant, but find
+him full of the mystery and spirit of his age.
+
+Even his poverty and pain would grow great, released from the shallow
+insult of the present, and the paltry things in his basket would acquire
+pathetic dignity.
+
+
+
+18
+
+
+With the morning he came out to walk a road shaded by a file of deodars,
+that coiled the hill round like importunate love.
+
+He held the first letter from his newly wedded wife in their village home,
+begging him to come to her, and come soon.
+
+The touch of an absent hand haunted him as he walked, and the air seemed to
+take up the cry of the letter: "Love, my love, my sky is brimming with
+tears!"
+
+He asked himself in wonder, "How do I deserve this?"
+
+The sun suddenly appeared over the rim of the blue hills, and four girls
+from a foreign shore came with swift strides, talking loud and followed by
+a barking dog.
+
+The two elder turned away to conceal their amusement at something strange
+in his insignificance, and the younger ones pushed each other, laughed
+aloud, and ran off in exuberant mirth.
+
+He stopped and his head sank. Then he suddenly felt his letter, opened and
+read it again.
+
+
+
+19
+
+
+The day came for the image from the temple to be drawn round the holy town
+in its chariot.
+
+The Queen said to the King, "Let us go and attend the festival."
+
+Only one man out of the whole household did not join in the pilgrimage. His
+work was to collect stalks of spear-grass to make brooms for the King's
+house.
+
+The chief of the servants said in pity to him, "You may come with us."
+
+He bowed his head, saying, "It cannot be."
+
+
+The man dwelt by the road along which the King's followers had to pass. And
+when the Minister's elephant reached this spot, he called to him and said,
+"Come with us and see the God ride in his chariot!"
+
+"I dare not seek God after the King's fashion," said the man.
+
+"How should you ever have such luck again as to see the God in his
+chariot?" asked the Minister.
+
+"When God himself comes to my door," answered the man.
+
+The Minister laughed loud and said, "Fool! 'When God comes to your door!'
+yet a King must travel to see him!"
+
+"Who except God visits the poor?" said the man.
+
+
+
+20
+
+
+Days were drawing out as the winter ended, and, in the sun, my dog played
+in his wild way with the pet deer.
+
+The crowd going to the market gathered by the fence, and laughed to see the
+love of these playmates struggle with languages so dissimilar.
+
+
+The spring was in the air, and the young leaves fluttered like flames. A
+gleam danced in the deer's dark eyes when she started, bent her neck at the
+movement of her own shadow, or raised her ears to listen to some whisper in
+the wind.
+
+The message comes floating with the errant breeze, with the rustle and
+glimmer abroad in the April sky. It sings of the first ache of youth in the
+world, when the first flower broke from the bud, and love went forth
+seeking that which it knew not, leaving all it had known.
+
+
+And one afternoon, when among the _amlak_ trees the shadow grew grave and
+sweet with the furtive caress of light, the deer set off to run like a
+meteor in love with death.
+
+It grew dark, and lamps were lighted in the house; the stars came out and
+night was upon the fields, but the deer never came back.
+
+My dog ran up to me whining, questioning me with his piteous eyes which
+seemed to say, "I do not understand!"
+
+But who does ever understand?
+
+
+
+21
+
+
+Our Lane is tortuous, as if, ages ago, she started in quest of her goal,
+vacillated right and left, and remained bewildered for ever.
+
+Above in the air, between her buildings, hangs like a ribbon a strip torn
+out of space: she calls it her sister of the blue town.
+
+She sees the sun only for a few moments at mid-day, and asks herself in
+wise doubt, "Is it real?"
+
+In June rain sometimes shades her band of daylight as with pencil
+hatchings. The path grows slippery with mud, and umbrellas collide. Sudden
+jets of water from spouts overhead splash on her startled pavement. In her
+dismay, she takes it for the jest of an unmannerly scheme of creation.
+
+The spring breeze, gone astray in her coil of contortions, stumbles like a
+drunken vagabond against angle and corner, filling the dusty air with
+scraps of paper and rag. "What fury of foolishness! Are the Gods gone mad?"
+she exclaims in indignation.
+
+But the daily refuse from the houses on both sides--scales of fish mixed
+with ashes, vegetable peelings, rotten fruit, and dead rats--never rouse
+her to question, "Why should these things be?"
+
+She accepts every stone of her paving. But from between their chinks
+sometimes a blade of grass peeps up. That baffles her. How can solid facts
+permit such intrusion?
+
+On a morning when at the touch of autumn light her houses wake up into
+beauty from their foul dreams, she whispers to herself, "There is a
+limitless wonder somewhere beyond these buildings."
+
+But the hours pass on; the households are astir; the maid strolls back from
+the market, swinging her right arm and with the left clasping the basket of
+provisions to her side; the air grows thick with the smell and smoke of
+kitchens. It again becomes clear to our Lane that the real and normal
+consist solely of herself, her houses, and their muck-heaps.
+
+
+
+22
+
+
+The house, lingering on after its wealth has vanished, stands by the
+wayside like a madman with a patched rag over his back.
+
+Day after day scars it with spiteful scratches, and rainy months leave
+their fantastic signatures on its bared bricks.
+
+In a deserted upper room one of a pair of doors has fallen from rusty
+hinges; and the other, widowed, bangs day and night to the fitful gusts.
+
+One night the sound of women wailing came from that house. They mourned the
+death of the last son of the family, a boy of eighteen, who earned his
+living by playing the part of the heroine in a travelling theatre.
+
+A few days more and the house became silent, and all the doors were locked.
+
+Only on the north side in the upper room that desolate door would neither
+drop off to its rest nor be shut, but swung to and fro in the wind like a
+self-torturing soul.
+
+
+After a time children's voices echo once more through that house. Over the
+balcony-rail women's clothes are hung in the sun, a bird whistles from a
+covered cage, and a boy plays with his kite on the terrace.
+
+A tenant has come to occupy a few rooms. He earns little and has many
+children. The tired mother beats them and they roll on the floor and
+shriek.
+
+
+A maid-servant of forty drudges through the day, quarrels with her
+mistress, threatens to, but never leaves.
+
+Every day some small repairs are done. Paper is pasted in place of missing
+panes; gaps in the railings are made good with split bamboo; an empty box
+keeps the boltless gate shut; old stains vaguely show through new whitewash
+on the walls.
+
+The magnificence of wealth had found a fitting memorial in gaunt
+desolation; but, lacking sufficient means, they try to hide this with
+dubious devices, and its dignity is outraged.
+
+They have overlooked the deserted room on the north side. And its forlorn
+door still bangs in the wind, like Despair beating her breast.
+
+
+
+23
+
+
+In the depths of the forest the ascetic practised penance with fast-closed
+eyes; he intended to deserve Paradise.
+
+But the girl who gathered twigs brought him fruits in her skirt, and water
+from the stream in cups made of leaves.
+
+The days went on, and his penance grew harsher till the fruits remained
+untasted, the water untouched: and the girl who gathered twigs was sad.
+
+
+The Lord of Paradise heard that a man had dared to aspire to be as the
+Gods. Time after time he had fought the Titans, who were his peers, and
+kept them out of his kingdom; yet he feared a man whose power was that of
+suffering.
+
+But he knew the ways of mortals, and he planned a temptation to decoy this
+creature of dust away from his adventure.
+
+
+A breath from Paradise kissed the limbs of the girl who gathered twigs, and
+her youth ached with a sudden rapture of beauty, and her thoughts hummed
+like the bees of a rifled hive.
+
+The time came when the ascetic should leave the forest for a mountain cave,
+to complete the rigour of his penance.
+
+When he opened his eyes in order to start on this journey, the girl
+appeared to him like a verse familiar, yet forgotten, and which an added
+melody made strange. The ascetic rose from his seat and told her that it
+was time he left the forest.
+
+"But why rob me of my chance to serve you?" she asked with tears in her
+eyes.
+
+He sat down again, thought for long, and remained on where he was.
+
+
+That night remorse kept the girl awake. She began to dread her power and
+hate her triumph, yet her mind tossed on the waves of turbulent delight.
+
+In the morning she came and saluted the ascetic and asked his blessing,
+saying she must leave him.
+
+He gazed on her face in silence, then said, "Go, and may your wish be
+fulfilled."
+
+For years he sat alone till his penance was complete.
+
+The Lord of the Immortals came down to tell him that he had won Paradise.
+
+"I no longer need it," said he.
+
+The God asked him what greater reward he desired.
+
+"I want the girl who gathers twigs."
+
+
+
+24
+
+
+They said that Kabir, the weaver, was favoured of God, and the crowd
+flocked round him for medicine and miracles. But he was troubled; his low
+birth had hitherto endowed him with a most precious obscurity to sweeten
+with songs and with the presence of his God. He prayed that it might be
+restored.
+
+Envious of the repute of this outcast, the priests leagued themselves with
+a harlot to disgrace him. Kabir came to the market to sell cloths from his
+loom; when the woman grasped his hand, blaming him for being faithless, and
+followed him to his house, saying she would not be forsaken, Kabir said to
+himself, "God answers prayers in his own way."
+
+Soon the woman felt a shiver of fear and fell on her knees and cried, "Save
+me from my sin!" To which he said, "Open your life to God's light!"
+
+Kabir worked at his loom and sang, and his songs washed the stains from
+that woman's heart, and by way of return found a home in her sweet voice.
+
+One day the King, in a fit of caprice, sent a message to Kabir to come and
+sing before him. The weaver shook his head: but the messenger dared not
+leave his door till his master's errand was fulfilled.
+
+The King and his courtiers started at the sight of Kabir when he entered
+the hall. For he was not alone, the woman followed him. Some smiled, some
+frowned, and the King's face darkened at the beggar's pride and
+shamelessness.
+
+Kabir came back to his house disgraced, the woman fell at his feet crying,
+"Why accept such dishonour for my sake, master? Suffer me to go back to my
+infamy!"
+
+Kabir said, "I dare not turn my God away when he comes branded with
+insult."
+
+
+
+25
+
+SOMAKA AND RITVIK
+
+
+SOMAKA AND RITVIK
+
+_The shade of_ KING SOMAKA, _faring to Heaven in a chariot, passes other
+shades by the roadside, among them that of_ RITVIK, _his former
+high-priest_.
+
+
+A VOICE
+
+Where would you go, King?
+
+
+SOMAKA
+
+Whose voice is that? This turbid air is like suffocation to the eyes; I
+cannot see.
+
+
+THE VOICE
+
+Come down, King! Come down from that chariot bound for Heaven.
+
+
+SOMAKA
+
+Who are you?
+
+
+THE VOICE
+
+I am Ritvik, who in my earthly life was your preceptor and the chief priest
+of your house.
+
+
+SOMAKA
+
+Master, all the tears of the world seem to have become vapour to create
+this realm of vagueness. What make you here?
+
+
+SHADES
+
+This hell lies hard by the road to Heaven, whence lights glimmer dimly,
+only to prove unapproachable. Day and night we listen to the heavenly
+chariot rumbling by with travellers for that region of bliss; it drives
+sleep from our eyes and forces them to watch in fruitless jealousy. Far
+below us earth's old forests rustle and her seas chant the primal hymn of
+creation: they sound like the wail of a memory that wanders void space in
+vain.
+
+
+RITVIK
+
+Come down, King!
+
+
+SHADES
+
+Stop a few moments among us. The earth's tears still cling about you, like
+dew on freshly culled flowers. You have brought with you the mingled odours
+of meadow and forest; reminiscence of children, women, and comrades;
+something too of the ineffable music of the seasons.
+
+
+SOMAKA
+
+Master, why are you doomed to live in this muffled stagnant world?
+
+
+RITVIK
+
+I offered up your son in the sacrificial fire: _that_ sin has lodged my
+soul in this obscurity.
+
+
+SHADES
+
+King, tell us the story, we implore you; the recital of crime can still
+bring life's fire into our torpor.
+
+
+SOMAKA
+
+I was named Somaka, the King of Videha. After sacrificing at innumerable
+shrines weary year on year, a son was born to my house in my old age, love
+for whom, like a sudden untimely flood, swept consideration for everything
+else from my life. He hid me completely, as a lotus hides its stem. The
+neglected duties of a king piled up in shame before my throne. One day, in
+my audience hall, I heard my child cry from his mother's room, and
+instantly rushed away, vacating my throne.
+
+
+RITVIK
+
+Just then, it chanced, I entered the hall to give him my daily benediction;
+in blind haste he brushed me aside and enkindled my anger. When later he
+came back, shame-faced, I asked him: "King, what desperate alarm could draw
+you at the busiest hour of the day to the women's apartments, so as to
+desert your dignity and duty--ambassadors come from friendly courts, the
+aggrieved who ask for justice, your ministers waiting to discuss matters of
+grave import? and even lead you to slight a Brahmin's blessing?"
+
+
+SOMAKA
+
+At first my heart flamed with anger; the next moment I trampled it down
+like the raised head of a snake and meekly replied: "Having only one child,
+I have lost my peace of mind. Forgive me this once, and I promise that in
+future the father's infatuation shall never usurp the King."
+
+
+RITVIK
+
+But my heart was bitter with resentment, and I said, "If you must be
+delivered from the curse of having only one child, I can show you the way.
+But so hard is it that I feel certain you will fail to follow it." This
+galled the King's pride and he stood up and exclaimed, "I swear, by all
+that is sacred, as a Kshatriya and a King, I will not shrink, but perform
+whatever you may ask, however hard." "Then listen," said I. "Light a
+sacrificial fire, offer up your son: the smoke that rises will bring you
+progeny, as the clouds bring rain." The King bowed his head upon his breast
+and remained silent: the courtiers shouted their horror, the Brahmins
+clapped their hands over their ears, crying, "Sin it is both to utter and
+listen to such words." After some moments of bewildered dismay the King
+calmly said, "I will abide by my promise." The day came, the fire was lit,
+the town was emptied of its people, the child was called for; but the
+attendants refused to obey, the soldiers rebelliously went off duty,
+throwing down their arms. Then I, who in my wisdom had soared far above all
+weakness of heart and to whom emotions were illusory, went myself to the
+apartment where, with their arms, women fenced the child like a flower
+surrounded by the menacing branches of a tree. He saw me and stretched out
+eager hands and struggled to come to me, for he longed to be free from the
+love that imprisoned him. Crying, "I am come to give you true deliverance,"
+I snatched him by force from his fainting mother and his nurses wailing in
+despair. With quivering tongues the fire licked the sky and the King stood
+beside it, still and silent, like a tree struck dead by lightning.
+Fascinated by the godlike splendour of the blaze, the child babbled in glee
+and danced in my arms, impatient to seek an unknown nurse in the free glory
+of those flames.
+
+
+SOMAKA
+
+Stop, no more, I pray!
+
+
+SHADES
+
+Ritvik, your presence is a disgrace to hell itself!
+
+
+THE CHARIOTEER
+
+This is no place for you, King! nor have you deserved to be forced to
+listen to this recital of a deed which makes hell shudder in pity.
+
+
+SOMAKA
+
+Drive off in your chariot!--Brahmin, my place is by you in this hell. The
+Gods may forget my sin, but can I forget the last look of agonised surprise
+on my child's face when, for one terrible moment, he realised that his own
+father had betrayed his trust?
+
+
+_Enter_ DHARMA, _the Judge of Departed Spirits_
+
+
+DHARMA
+
+King, Heaven waits for you.
+
+
+SOMAKA
+
+No, not for me. I killed my own child.
+
+
+DHARMA
+
+Your sin has been swept away in the fury of pain it caused you.
+
+
+RITVIK
+
+No, King, you must never go to Heaven alone, and thus create a second hell
+for me, to burn both with fire and with hatred of you! Stay here!
+
+
+SOMAKA
+
+I will stay.
+
+
+SHADES
+
+And crown the despair and inglorious suffering of hell with the triumph of
+a soul!
+
+
+
+26
+
+
+The man had no useful work, only vagaries of various kinds.
+
+Therefore it surprised him to find himself in Paradise after a life spent
+perfecting trifles.
+
+Now the guide had taken him by mistake to the wrong Paradise--one meant
+only for good, busy souls.
+
+
+In this Paradise, our man saunters along the road only to obstruct the rush
+of business.
+
+He stands aside from the path and is warned that he tramples on sown seed.
+Pushed, he starts up: hustled, he moves on.
+
+A very busy girl comes to fetch water from the well. Her feet run on the
+pavement like rapid fingers over harp-strings. Hastily she ties a negligent
+knot with her hair, and loose locks on her forehead pry into the dark of
+her eyes.
+
+The man says to her, "Would you lend me your pitcher?"
+
+"My pitcher?" she asks, "to draw water?"
+
+"No, to paint patterns on."
+
+"I have no time to waste," the girl retorts in contempt.
+
+
+Now a busy soul has no chance against one who is supremely idle.
+
+Every day she meets him at the well, and every day he repeats the same
+request, till at last she yields.
+
+Our man paints the pitcher with curious colours in a mysterious maze of
+lines.
+
+The girl takes it up, turns it round and asks, "What does it mean?"
+
+"It has no meaning," he answers.
+
+
+The girl carries the pitcher home. She holds it up in different lights and
+tries to con its mystery.
+
+At night she leaves her bed, lights a lamp, and gazes at it from all points
+of view.
+
+This is the first time she has met with something without meaning.
+
+
+On the next day the man is again near the well.
+
+The girl asks, "What do you want?"
+
+"To do more work for you."
+
+"What work?" she enquires.
+
+"Allow me to weave coloured strands into a ribbon to bind your hair."
+
+"Is there any need?" she asks.
+
+"None whatever," he allows.
+
+The ribbon is made, and thence-forward she spends a great deal of time over
+her hair.
+
+The even stretch of well-employed time in that Paradise begins to show
+irregular rents.
+
+The elders are troubled; they meet in council.
+
+The guide confesses his blunder, saying that he has brought the wrong man
+to the wrong place.
+
+The wrong man is called. His turban, flaming with colour, shows plainly how
+great that blunder has been.
+
+The chief of the elders says, "You must go back to the earth."
+
+The man heaves a sigh of relief: "I am ready."
+
+The girl with the ribbon round her hair chimes in: "I also!"
+
+For the first time the chief of the elders is faced with a situation which
+has no sense in it.
+
+
+
+27
+
+
+It is said that in the forest, near the meeting of river and lake, certain
+fairies live in disguise who are only recognised as fairies after they have
+flown away.
+
+A Prince went to this forest, and when he came where river met lake he saw
+a village girl sitting on the bank ruffling the water to make the lilies
+dance.
+
+He asked her in a whisper, "Tell me, what fairy art thou?"
+
+The girl laughed at the question and the hillsides echoed her mirth.
+
+The Prince thought she was the laughing fairy of the waterfall.
+
+
+News reached the King that the Prince had married a fairy: he sent horses
+and men and brought them to his house.
+
+The Queen saw the bride and turned her face away in disgust, the Prince's
+sister flushed red with annoyance, and the maids asked if that was how
+fairies dressed.
+
+The Prince whispered, "Hush! my fairy has come to our house in disguise."
+
+
+On the day of the yearly festival the Queen said to her son, "Ask your
+bride not to shame us before our kinsfolk who are coming to see the fairy."
+
+And the Prince said to his bride, "For my love's sake show thy true self to
+my people."
+
+Long she sat silent, then nodded her promise while tears ran down her
+cheeks.
+
+
+The full moon shone, the Prince, dressed in a wedding robe, entered his
+bride's room.
+
+No one was there, nothing but a streak of moonlight from the window aslant
+the bed.
+
+The kinsfolk crowded in with the King and the Queen, the Prince's sister
+stood by the door.
+
+All asked, "Where is the fairy bride?"
+
+The Prince answered, "She has vanished for ever to make herself known to
+you."
+
+
+
+28
+
+KARNA AND KUNTI
+
+
+KARNA AND KUNTI
+
+_The Pandava Queen Kunti before marriage had a son, Karna, who, in manhood,
+became the commander of the Kaurava host. To hide her shame she abandoned
+him at birth, and a charioteer, Adhiratha, brought him up as his son._
+
+
+KARNA
+
+I am Karna, the son of the charioteer, Adhiratha, and I sit here by the
+bank of holy Ganges to worship the setting sun. Tell me who you are.
+
+
+KUNTI
+
+I am the woman who first made you acquainted with that light you are
+worshipping.
+
+
+KARNA
+
+I do not understand: but your eyes melt my heart as the kiss of the morning
+sun melts the snow on a mountain-top, and your voice rouses a blind sadness
+within me of which the cause may well lie beyond the reach of my earliest
+memory. Tell me, strange woman, what mystery binds my birth to you?
+
+
+KUNTI
+
+Patience, my son. I will answer when the lids of darkness come down over
+the prying eyes of day. In the meanwhile, know that I am Kunti.
+
+
+KARNA
+
+Kunti! The mother of Arjuna?
+
+
+KUNTI
+
+Yes, indeed, the mother of Arjuna, your antagonist. But do not, therefore,
+hate me. I still remember the day of the trial of arms in Hastina when you,
+an unknown boy, boldly stepped into the arena, like the first ray of dawn
+among the stars of night. Ah! who was that unhappy woman whose eyes kissed
+your bare, slim body through tears that blessed you, where she sat among
+the women of the royal household behind the arras? Why, the mother of
+Arjuna! Then the Brahmin, master of arms, stepped forth and said, "No youth
+of mean birth may challenge Arjuna to a trial of strength." You stood
+speechless, like a thunder-cloud at sunset flashing with an agony of
+suppressed light. But who was the woman whose heart caught fire from your
+shame and anger, and flared up in silence? The mother of Arjuna! Praised be
+Duryodhana, who perceived your worth, and then and there crowned you King
+of Anga, thus winning the Kauravas a champion. Overwhelmed at this good
+fortune, Adhiratha, the charioteer, broke through the crowd; you instantly
+rushed to him and laid your crown at his feet amid the jeering laughter of
+the Pandavas and their friends. But there was one woman of the Pandava
+house whose heart glowed with joy at the heroic pride of such
+humility;--even the mother of Arjuna!
+
+
+KARNA
+
+But what brings you here alone, Mother of kings?
+
+
+KUNTI
+
+I have a boon to crave.
+
+
+KARNA
+
+Command me, and whatever manhood and my honour as a Kshatriya permit shall
+be offered at your feet.
+
+
+KUNTI
+
+I have come to take you.
+
+
+KARNA
+
+Where?
+
+
+KUNTI
+
+To my breast thirsting for your love, my son.
+
+
+KARNA
+
+Fortunate mother of five brave kings, where can you find place for me, a
+small chieftain of lowly descent?
+
+
+KUNTI
+
+Your place is before all my other sons.
+
+
+KARNA
+
+But what right have I to take it?
+
+
+KUNTI
+
+Your own God-given right to your mother's love.
+
+
+KARNA
+
+The gloom of evening spreads over the earth, silence rests on the water,
+and your voice leads me back to some primal world of infancy lost in twilit
+consciousness. However, whether this be dream, or fragment of forgotten
+reality, come near and place your right hand on my forehead. Rumour runs
+that I was deserted by my mother. Many a night she has come to me in my
+slumber, but when I cried: "Open your veil, show me your face!" her figure
+always vanished. Has this same dream come this evening while I wake? See,
+yonder the lamps are lighted in your son's tents across the river; and on
+this side behold the tent-domes of my Kauravas, like the suspended waves of
+a spell-arrested storm at sea. Before the din of tomorrow's battle, in the
+awful hush of this field where it must be fought, why should the voice of
+the mother of my opponent, Arjuna, bring me a message of forgotten
+motherhood? and why should my name take such music from her tongue as to
+draw my heart out to him and his brothers?
+
+
+KUNTI
+
+Then delay not, my son, come with me!
+
+
+KARNA
+
+Yes, I will come and never ask question, never doubt. My soul responds to
+your call; and the struggle for victory and fame and the rage of hatred
+have suddenly become untrue to me, as the delirious dream of a night in the
+serenity of the dawn. Tell me whither you mean to lead?
+
+
+KUNTI
+
+To the other bank of the river, where those lamps burn across the ghastly
+pallor of the sands.
+
+
+KARNA
+
+Am I there to find my lost mother for ever?
+
+
+KUNTI
+
+O my son!
+
+
+KARNA
+
+Then why did you banish me--a castaway uprooted from my ancestral soil,
+adrift in a homeless current of indignity? Why set a bottomless chasm
+between Arjuna and myself, turning the natural attachment of kinship to the
+dread attraction of hate? You remain speechless. Your shame permeates the
+vast darkness and sends invisible shivers through my limbs. Leave my
+question unanswered! Never explain to me what made you rob your son of his
+mother's love! Only tell me why you have come to-day to call me back to the
+ruins of a heaven wrecked by your own hands?
+
+
+KUNTI
+
+I am dogged by a curse more deadly than your reproaches: for, though
+surrounded by five sons, my heart shrivels like that of a woman deprived of
+her children. Through the great rent that yawned for my deserted
+first-born, all my life's pleasures have run to waste. On that accursed day
+when I belied my motherhood you could not utter a word; to-day your
+recreant mother implores you for generous words. Let your forgiveness burn
+her heart like fire and consume its sin.
+
+
+KARNA
+
+Mother, accept my tears!
+
+
+KUNTI
+
+I did not come with the hope of winning you back to my arms, but with that
+of restoring your rights to you. Come and receive, as a king's son, your
+due among your brothers.
+
+
+KARNA
+
+I am more truly the son of a charioteer, and do not covet the glory of
+greater parentage.
+
+
+KUNTI
+
+Be that as it may, come and win back the kingdom, which is yours by right!
+
+
+KARNA
+
+Must you, who once refused me a mother's love, tempt me with a kingdom? The
+quick bond of kindred which you severed at its root is dead, and can never
+grow again. Shame were mine should I hasten to call the mother of kings
+mother, and abandon _my_ mother in the charioteer's house!
+
+
+KUNTI
+
+You are great, my son! How God's punishment invisibly grows from a tiny
+seed to a giant life! The helpless babe disowned by his mother comes back a
+man through the dark maze of events to smite his brothers!
+
+
+KARNA
+
+Mother, have no fear! I know for certain that victory awaits the Pandavas.
+Peaceful and still though this night be, my heart is full of the music of a
+hopeless venture and baffled end. Ask me not to leave those who are doomed
+to defeat. Let the Pandavas win the throne, since they must: I remain with
+the desperate and forlorn. On the night of my birth you left me naked and
+unnamed to disgrace: leave me once again without pity to the calm
+expectation of defeat and death!
+
+
+
+29
+
+
+When like a flaming scimitar the hill stream has been sheathed in gloom by
+the evening, suddenly a flock of birds passes overhead, their loud-laughing
+wings hurling their flight like an arrow among stars.
+
+It startles a passion for speed in the heart of all motionless things; the
+hills seem to feel in their bosom the anguish of storm-clouds, and trees
+long to break their rooted shackles.
+
+
+For me the flight of these birds has rent a veil of stillness, and reveals
+an immense flutter in this deep silence.
+
+I see these hills and forests fly across time to the unknown, and darkness
+thrill into fire as the stars wing by.
+
+I feel in my own being the rush of the sea-crossing bird, cleaving a way
+beyond the limits of life and death, while the migrant world cries with a
+myriad voices, "Not here, but somewhere else, in the bosom of the Faraway."
+
+
+
+30
+
+
+The crowd listens in wonder to Kashi, the young singer, whose voice, like a
+sword in feats of skill, dances amidst hopeless tangles, cuts them to
+pieces, and exults.
+
+
+Among the hearers sits old Rajah Pratap in weary endurance. For his own
+life had been nourished and encircled by Barajlal's songs, like a happy
+land which a river laces with beauty. His rainy evenings and the still
+hours of autumn days spoke to his heart through Barajlal's voice, and his
+festive nights trimmed their lamps and tinkled their bells to those songs.
+
+
+When Kashi stopped for rest, Pratap smilingly winked at Barajlal and spoke
+to him in a whisper, "Master, now let us hear music and not this
+new-fangled singing, which mimics frisky kittens hunting paralysed mice."
+
+
+The old singer with his spotlessly white turban made a deep bow to the
+assembly and took his seat. His thin fingers struck the strings of his
+instrument, his eyes closed, and in timid hesitation his song began. The
+hall was large, his voice feeble, and Pratap shouted "Bravo!" with
+ostentation, but whispered in his ear, "Just a little louder, friend!"
+
+
+The crowd was restless; some yawned, some dozed, some complained of the
+heat. The air of the hall hummed with many-toned inattention, and the song,
+like a frail boat, tossed upon it in vain till it sank under the hubbub.
+
+
+Suddenly the old man, stricken at heart, forgot a passage, and his voice
+groped in agony, like a blind man at a fair for his lost leader. He tried
+to fill the gap with any strain that came. But the gap still yawned: and
+the tortured notes refused to serve the need, suddenly changed their tune,
+and broke into a sob. The master laid his head on his instrument, and in
+place of his forgotten music, there broke from him the first cry of life
+that a child brings into the world.
+
+
+Pratap touched him gently on his shoulder, and said, "Come away, our
+meeting is elsewhere. I know, my friend, that truth is widowed without
+love, and beauty dwells not with the many, nor in the moment."
+
+
+
+31
+
+
+In the youth of the world, Himalaya, you sprang from the rent breast of the
+earth, and hurled your burning challenges to the sun, hill after hill. Then
+came the mellow time when you said to yourself, "No more, no further!" and
+your fiery heart, that raged for the freedom of clouds, found its limits,
+and stood still to salute the limitless. After this check on your passion,
+beauty was free to play upon your breast, and trust surrounded you with the
+joy of flowers and birds.
+
+
+You sit in your solitude like a great reader, on whose lap lies open some
+ancient book with its countless pages of stone. What story is written
+there, I wonder?--is it the eternal wedding of the divine ascetic, Shiva,
+with Bhavani, the divine love?--the drama of the Terrible wooing the power
+of the Frail?
+
+
+
+32
+
+
+I feel that my heart will leave its own colour in all your scenes, O Earth,
+when I bid you farewell. Some notes of mine will be added to your seasons'
+melody, and my thoughts will breathe unrecognised through the cycle of
+shadows and sunshine.
+
+In far-distant days summer will come to the lovers' garden, but they will
+not know that their flowers have borrowed an added beauty from my songs,
+nor that their love for this world has been deepened by mine.
+
+
+
+33
+
+
+My eyes feel the deep peace of this sky, and there stirs through me what a
+tree feels when it holds out its leaves like cups to be filled with
+sunshine.
+
+A thought rises in my mind, like the warm breath from grass in the sun; it
+mingles with the gurgle of lapping water and the sigh of weary wind in
+village lanes,--the thought that I have lived along with the whole life of
+this world and have given to it my own love and sorrows.
+
+
+
+34
+
+
+I ask no reward for the songs I sang you. I shall be content if they live
+through the night, until Dawn, like a shepherd-maiden, calls away the
+stars, in alarm at the sun.
+
+But there were moments when you sang your songs to me, and as my pride
+knows, my Poet, you will ever remember that I listened and lost my heart.
+
+
+
+35
+
+
+In the morning, when the dew glistened upon the grass, you came and gave a
+push to my swing; but, sweeping from smiles to tears, I did not know you.
+
+
+Then came April's noon of gorgeous light, and I think you beckoned me to
+follow you.
+
+But when I sought your face, there passed between us the procession of
+flowers, and men and women flinging their songs to the south wind.
+
+
+Daily I passed you unheeded on the road.
+
+But on some days full of the faint smell of oleanders, when the wind was
+wilful among complaining palm leaves, I would stand before you wondering if
+you ever had been a stranger to me.
+
+
+
+36
+
+
+The day grew dim. The early evening star faltered near the edge of a grey
+lonely sky.
+
+I looked back and felt that the road lying behind me was infinitely
+removed; traced through my life, it had only served for a single journey
+and was never to be re-travelled.
+
+The long story of my coming hither lies there dumb, in one meandering line
+of dust stretching from the morning hilltop to the brink of bottomless
+night.
+
+I sit alone, and wonder if this road is like an instrument waiting to give
+up the day's lost voices in music when touched by divine fingers at
+nightfall.
+
+
+
+37
+
+
+Give me the supreme courage of love, this is my prayer--the courage to
+speak, to do, to suffer at thy will, to leave all things or be left alone.
+Strengthen me on errands of danger, honour me with pain, and help me climb
+to that difficult mood which sacrifices daily to thee.
+
+Give me the supreme confidence of love, this is my prayer--the confidence
+that belongs to life in death, to victory in defeat, to the power hidden in
+frailest beauty, to that dignity in pain which accepts hurt but disdains to
+return it.
+
+
+
+38
+
+TRANSLATIONS
+
+
+FROM HINDI SONGS OF JNANADAS
+
+
+
+1
+
+
+Where were your songs, my bird, when you spent your nights in the nest?
+
+Was not all your pleasure stored therein?
+
+What makes you lose your heart to the sky--the sky that is boundless?
+
+
+_Answer_
+
+While I rested within bounds I was content. But when I soared into vastness
+I found I could sing.
+
+
+
+2
+
+
+Messenger, morning brought you, habited in gold.
+
+After sunset your song wore a tune of ascetic grey, and then came night.
+
+Your message was written in bright letters across black.
+
+Why is such splendour about you to lure the heart of one who is nothing?
+
+
+_Answer_
+
+Great is the festival hall where you are to be the only guest.
+
+Therefore the letter to you is written from sky to sky, and I, the proud
+servant, bring the invitation with all ceremony.
+
+
+
+3
+
+
+I had travelled all day and was tired, then I bowed my head towards thy
+kingly court still far away.
+
+The night deepened, a longing burned in my heart; whatever the words I
+sang, pain cried through them, for even my songs thirsted. O my Lover, my
+Beloved, my best in all the world!
+
+
+When time seemed lost in darkness thy hand dropped its sceptre to take up
+the lute and strike the uttermost chords; and my heart sang out, O my
+Lover, my Beloved, my best in all the world!
+
+Ah, who is this whose arms enfold me?
+
+
+Whatever I have to leave let me leave, and whatever I have to bear let me
+bear. Only let me walk with thee, O my Lover, my Beloved, my best in all
+the world!
+
+
+Descend at whiles from thine audience hall, come down amid joys and
+sorrows; hide in all forms and delights, in love and in my heart; there
+sing thy songs, O my Lover, my Beloved, my best in all the world!
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Fugitive, by Rabindranath Tagore
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Fugitive, by Rabindranath Tagore
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
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+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: The Fugitive
+
+Author: Rabindranath Tagore
+
+Release Date: April, 2005  [EBook #7971]
+[This file was first posted on June 8, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE FUGITIVE ***
+
+
+
+
+Eric Eldred, Christine De Ryck, Charles Franks, and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+THE FUGITIVE
+
+BY
+
+RABINDRANATH TAGORE
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+W.W. PEARSON
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+    THE FUGITIVE--I.
+
+    KACHA AND DEVAYANI
+
+    TRANSLATIONS
+
+    THE FUGITIVE--II.
+
+    AMA AND VINAYAKA
+
+    THE MOTHER'S PRAYER
+
+    TRANSLATIONS
+
+    THE FUGITIVE--III.
+
+    SOMAKA AND RITVIK
+
+    KARNA AND KUNTI
+
+    TRANSLATIONS
+
+
+
+1
+
+
+Darkly you sweep on, Eternal Fugitive, round whose bodiless rush stagnant
+space frets into eddying bubbles of light.
+
+Is your heart lost to the Lover calling you across his immeasurable
+loneliness?
+
+Is the aching urgency of your haste the sole reason why your tangled
+tresses break into stormy riot and pearls of fire roll along your path as
+from a broken necklace?
+
+
+Your fleeting steps kiss the dust of this world into sweetness, sweeping
+aside all waste; the storm centred with your dancing limbs shakes the
+sacred shower of death over life and freshens her growth.
+
+Should you in sudden weariness stop for a moment, the world would rumble
+into a heap, an encumbrance, barring its own progress, and even the least
+speck of dust would pierce the sky throughout its infinity with an
+unbearable pressure.
+
+
+My thoughts are quickened by this rhythm of unseen feet round which the
+anklets of light are shaken.
+
+They echo in the pulse of my heart, and through my blood surges the psalm
+of the ancient sea.
+
+I hear the thundering flood tumbling my life from world to world and form
+to form, scattering my being in an endless spray of gifts, in sorrowings
+and songs.
+
+
+The tide runs high, the wind blows, the boat dances like thine own desire,
+my heart!
+
+Leave the hoard on the shore and sail over the unfathomed dark towards
+limitless light.
+
+
+
+2
+
+
+We came hither together, friend, and now at the cross-roads I stop to bid
+you farewell.
+
+Your path is wide and straight before you, but my call comes up by ways
+from the unknown.
+
+I shall follow wind and cloud; I shall follow the stars to where day breaks
+behind the hills; I shall follow lovers who, as they walk, twine their days
+into a wreath on a single thread of song, "I love."
+
+
+
+3
+
+
+It was growing dark when I asked her, "What strange land have I come to?"
+
+She only lowered her eyes, and the water gurgled in the throat of her jar,
+as she walked away.
+
+The trees hang vaguely over the bank, and the land appears as though it
+already belonged to the past.
+
+The water is dumb, the bamboos are darkly still, a wristlet tinkles against
+the water-jar from down the lane.
+
+
+Row no more, but fasten the boat to this tree,--for I love the look of this
+land.
+
+The evening star goes down behind the temple dome, and the pallor of the
+marble landing haunts the dark water.
+
+Belated wayfarers sigh; for light from hidden windows is splintered into
+the darkness by intervening wayside trees and bushes. Still that wristlet
+tinkles against the water-jar, and retreating steps rustle from down the
+lane littered with leaves.
+
+The night deepens, the palace towers loom spectre-like, and the town hums
+wearily.
+
+Row no more, but fasten the boat to a tree.
+
+Let me seek rest in this strange land, dimly lying under the stars, where
+darkness tingles with the tinkle of a wristlet knocking against a
+water-jar.
+
+
+
+4
+
+
+O that I were stored with a secret, like unshed rain in summer clouds--a
+secret, folded up in silence, that I could wander away with.
+
+O that I had some one to whisper to, where slow waters lap under trees that
+doze in the sun.
+
+The hush this evening seems to expect a footfall, and you ask me for the
+cause of my tears.
+
+I cannot give a reason why I weep, for that is a secret still withheld from
+me.
+
+
+
+5
+
+
+For once be careless, timid traveller, and utterly lose your way;
+wide-awake though you are, be like broad daylight enticed by and netted in
+mist.
+
+Do not shun the garden of Lost Hearts waiting at the end of the wrong road,
+where the grass is strewn with wrecked red flowers, and disconsolate water
+heaves in the troubled sea.
+
+Long have you watched over the store gathered by weary years. Let it be
+stripped, with nothing remaining but the desolate triumph of losing all.
+
+
+
+6
+
+
+Two little bare feet flit over the ground, and seem to embody that
+metaphor, "Flowers are the footprints of summer."
+
+They lightly impress on the dust the chronicle of their adventure, to be
+erased by a passing breeze.
+
+Come, stray into my heart, you tender little feet, and leave the
+everlasting print of songs on my dreamland path.
+
+
+
+7
+
+
+I am like the night to you, little flower.
+
+I can only give you peace and a wakeful silence hidden in the dark.
+
+When in the morning you open your eyes, I shall leave you to a world a-hum
+with bees, and songful with birds.
+
+My last gift to you will be a tear dropped into the depth of your youth; it
+will make your smile all the sweeter, and bemist your outlook on the
+pitiless mirth of day.
+
+
+
+8
+
+
+Do not stand before my window with those hungry eyes and beg for my secret.
+It is but a tiny stone of glistening pain streaked with blood-red by
+passion.
+
+What gifts have you brought in both hands to fling before me in the dust?
+
+I fear, if I accept, to create a debt that can never be paid even by the
+loss of all I have.
+
+Do not stand before my window with your youth and flowers to shame my
+destitute life.
+
+
+
+9
+
+
+If I were living in the royal town of Ujjain, when Kalidas was the king's
+poet, I should know some Malwa girl and fill my thoughts with the music of
+her name. She would glance at me through the slanting shadow of her
+eyelids, and allow her veil to catch in the jasmine as an excuse for
+lingering near me.
+
+This very thing happened in some past whose track is lost under time's dead
+leaves.
+
+The scholars fight to-day about dates that play hide-and-seek.
+
+I do not break my heart dreaming over flown and vanished ages: but alas and
+alas again, that those Malwa girls have followed them!
+
+To what heaven, I wonder, have they carried in their flower-baskets those
+days that tingled to the lyrics of the king's poet?
+
+This morning, separation from those whom I was born too late to meet weighs
+on and saddens my heart.
+
+Yet April carries the same flowers with which they decked their hair, and
+the same south breeze fluttered their veils as whispers over modern roses.
+
+And, to tell the truth, joys are not lacking to this spring, though Kalidas
+sing no more; and I know, if he can watch me from the Poets' Paradise, he
+has reasons to be envious.
+
+
+
+10
+
+
+Be not concerned about her heart, my heart: leave it in the dark.
+
+What if her beauty be of the figure and her smile merely of the face? Let
+me take without question the simple meaning of her glances and be happy.
+
+I care not if it be a web of delusion that her arms wind about me, for the
+web itself is rich and rare, and the deceit can be smiled at and forgotten.
+
+Be not concerned about her heart, my heart: be content if the music is
+true, though the words are not to be believed; enjoy the grace that dances
+like a lily on the rippling, deceiving surface, whatever may lie beneath.
+
+
+
+11
+
+
+Neither mother nor daughter are you, nor bride, Urvashi.[1] Woman you are,
+to ravish the soul of Paradise.
+
+[Footnote 1: The dancing girl of Paradise who rose from the sea.]
+
+When weary-footed evening comes down to the folds whither the cattle have
+returned, you never trim the house lamps nor walk to the bridal bed with a
+tremulous heart and a wavering smile on your lips, glad that the dark hours
+are so secret.
+
+Like the dawn you are without veil, Urvashi, and without shame.
+
+Who can imagine that aching overflow of splendour which created you!
+
+
+You rose from the churned ocean on the first day of the first spring, with
+the cup of life in your right hand and poison in your left. The monster
+sea, lulled like an enchanted snake, laid down its thousand hoods at your
+feet.
+
+Your unblemished radiance rose from the foam, white and naked as a jasmine.
+
+
+Were you ever small, timid or in bud, Urvashi, O Youth everlasting?
+
+Did you sleep, cradled in the deep blue night where the strange light of
+gems plays over coral, shells and moving creatures of dreamlike form, till
+day revealed your awful fulness of bloom?
+
+
+Adored are you of all men in all ages, Urvashi, O endless wonder!
+
+The world throbs with youthful pain at the glance of your eyes, the ascetic
+lays the fruit of his austerities at your feet, the songs of poets hum and
+swarm round the perfume of your presence. Your feet, as in careless joy
+they flit on, wound even the heart of the hollow wind with the tinkle of
+golden bells.
+
+When you dance before the gods, flinging orbits of novel rhythm into space,
+Urvashi, the earth shivers, leaf and grass, and autumn fields heave and
+sway; the sea surges into a frenzy of rhyming waves; the stars drop into
+the sky--beads from the chain that leaps till it breaks on your breast; and
+the blood dances in men's hearts with sudden turmoil.
+
+
+You are the first break on the crest of heaven's slumber, Urvashi, you
+thrill the air with unrest. The world bathes your limbs in her tears; with
+colour of her heart's blood are your feet red; lightly you poise on the
+wave-tossed lotus of desire, Urvashi; you play forever in that limitless
+mind wherein labours God's tumultuous dream.
+
+
+
+12
+
+
+You, like a rivulet swift and sinuous, laugh and dance, and your steps sing
+as you trip along.
+
+I, like a bank rugged and steep, stand speechless and stock-still and
+darkly gaze at you.
+
+
+I, like a big, foolish storm, of a sudden come rushing on and try to rend
+my being and scatter it parcelled in a whirl of passion.
+
+You, like the lightning's flash slender and keen, pierce the heart of the
+turbulent darkness, to disappear in a vivid streak of laughter.
+
+
+
+13
+
+
+You desired my love and yet you did not love me.
+
+Therefore my life clings to you like a chain of which clank and grip grow
+harsher the more you struggle to be free.
+
+My despair has become your deadly companion, clutching at the faintest of
+your favours, trying to drag you away into the cavern of tears.
+
+You have shattered my freedom, and with its wreck built your own prison.
+
+
+
+14
+
+
+I am glad you will not wait for me with that lingering pity in your look.
+
+It is only the spell of the night and my farewell words, startled at their
+own tune of despair, which bring these tears to my eyes. But day will dawn,
+my eyes will dry and my heart; and there will be no time for weeping.
+
+
+Who says it is hard to forget?
+
+The mercy of death works at life's core, bringing it respite from its own
+foolish persistence.
+
+The stormy sea is lulled at last in its rocking cradle; the forest fire
+falls to sleep on its bed of ashes.
+
+You and I shall part, and the cleavage will be hidden under living grass
+and flowers that laugh in the sun.
+
+
+
+15
+
+
+Of all days you have chosen this one to visit my garden.
+
+But the storm passed over my roses last night and the grass is strewn with
+torn leaves.
+
+I do not know what has brought you, now that the hedges are laid low and
+rills run in the walks; the prodigal wealth of spring is scattered and the
+scent and song of yesterday are wrecked.
+
+Yet stay a while; let me find some remnant flowers, though I doubt if your
+skirt can be filled.
+
+The time will be short, for the clouds thicken and here comes the rain
+again!
+
+
+
+16
+
+
+I forgot myself for a moment, and I came.
+
+But raise your eyes, and let me know if there still linger some shadow of
+other days, like a pale cloud on the horizon that has been robbed of its
+rain.
+
+For a moment bear with me if I forget myself.
+
+
+The roses are still in bud; they do not yet know how we neglect to gather
+flowers this summer.
+
+The morning star has the same palpitating hush; the early light is enmeshed
+in the branches that overbrow your window, as in those other days.
+
+That times are changed I forget for a little, and have come.
+
+
+I forget if you ever shamed me by looking away when I bared my heart.
+
+I only remember the words that stranded on the tremor of your lips; I
+remember in your dark eyes sweeping shadows of passion, like the wings of a
+home-seeking bird in the dusk.
+
+I forget that you do not remember, and I come.
+
+
+
+17
+
+
+The rain fell fast. The river rushed and hissed. It licked up and swallowed
+the island, while I waited alone on the lessening bank with my sheaves of
+corn in a heap.
+
+
+From the shadows of the opposite shore the boat crosses with a woman at the
+helm.
+
+I cry to her, "Come to my island coiled round with hungry water, and take
+away my year's harvest."
+
+
+She comes, and takes all that I have to the last grain; I ask her to take
+me.
+
+But she says, "No"--the boat is laden with my gift and no room is left for
+me.
+
+
+
+18
+
+
+The evening beckons, and I would fain follow the travellers who sailed in
+the last ferry of the ebb-tide to cross the dark.
+
+Some were for home, some for the farther shore, yet all have ventured to
+sail.
+
+But I sit alone at the landing, having left my home and missed the boat:
+summer is gone and my winter harvest is lost.
+
+I wait for that love which gathers failures to sow them in tears on the
+dark, that they may bear fruit when day rises anew.
+
+
+
+19
+
+
+On this side of the water there is no landing; the girls do not come here
+to fetch water; the land along its edge is shaggy with stunted shrubs; a
+noisy flock of _saliks_ dig their nests in the steep bank under whose frown
+the fisher-boats find no shelter.
+
+You sit there on the unfrequented grass, and the morning wears on. Tell me
+what you do on this bank so dry that it is agape with cracks?
+
+She looks in my face and says, "Nothing, nothing whatsoever."
+
+
+On this side of the river the bank is deserted, and no cattle come to
+water. Only some stray goats from the village browse the scanty grass all
+day, and the solitary water-hawk watches from an uprooted _peepal_ aslant
+over the mud.
+
+You sit there alone in the miserly shade of a _shimool,_ and the morning
+wears on.
+
+Tell me, for whom do you wait?
+
+She looks in my face and says, "No one, no one at all!"
+
+
+
+20
+
+KACHA AND DEVAYANI
+
+
+KACHA AND DEVAYANI
+
+_Young Kacha came from Paradise to learn the secret of immortality from a
+Sage who taught the Titans, and whose daughter Devayani fell in love with
+him._
+
+
+KACHA
+
+The time has come for me to take leave, Devayani; I have long sat at your
+father's feet, but to-day he completed his teaching. Graciously allow me to
+go back to the land of the Gods whence I came.
+
+
+DEVAYANI
+
+You have, as you desired, won that rare knowledge coveted by the Gods;--but
+think, do you aspire after nothing further?
+
+
+KACHA
+
+Nothing.
+
+
+DEVAYANI
+
+Nothing at all! Dive into the bottom of your heart; does no timid wish lurk
+there, fearful lest it be blighted?
+
+
+KACHA
+
+For me the sun of fulfilment has risen, and the stars have faded in its
+light. I have mastered the knowledge which gives life.
+
+
+DEVAYANI
+
+Then you must be the one happy being in creation. Alas! now for the first
+time I feel what torture these days spent in an alien land have been to
+you, though we offered you our best.
+
+
+KACHA
+
+Not so much bitterness! Smile, and give me leave to go.
+
+
+DEVAYANI
+
+Smile! But, my friend, this is not your native Paradise. Smiles are not so
+cheap in this world, where thirst, like a worm in the flower, gnaws at the
+heart's core; where baffled desire hovers round the desired, and memory
+never ceases to sigh foolishly after vanished joy.
+
+
+KACHA
+
+Devayani, tell me how I have offended?
+
+
+DEVAYANI
+
+Is it so easy for you to leave this forest, which through long years has
+lavished on you shade and song? Do you not feel how the wind wails through
+these glimmering shadows, and dry leaves whirl in the air, like ghosts of
+lost hope;--while you alone, who part from us, have a smile on your lips?
+
+
+KACHA
+
+This forest has been a second mother to me, for here I have been born
+again. My love for it shall never dwindle.
+
+
+DEVAYANI
+
+When you had driven the cattle to graze on the lawn, yonder banyan tree
+spread a hospitable shade for your tired limbs against the mid-day heat.
+
+
+KACHA
+
+I bow to thee, Lord of the Forest! Remember me, when under thy shade other
+students chant their lessons to an accompaniment of bees humming and leaves
+rustling.
+
+
+DEVAYANI
+
+And do not forget our Venumati, whose swift water is one stream of singing
+love.
+
+
+KACHA
+
+I shall ever remember her, the dear companion of my exile, who, like a busy
+village girl, smiles on her errand of ceaseless service and croons a simple
+song.
+
+
+DEVAYANI
+
+But, friend, let me also remind you that you had another companion whose
+thoughts were vainly busy to make you forget an exile's cares.
+
+
+KACHA
+
+The memory of her has become a part of my life.
+
+
+DEVAYANI
+
+I recall the day when, little more than a boy, you first arrived. You stood
+there, near the hedge of the garden, a smile in your eyes.
+
+
+KACHA
+
+And I saw you gathering flowers--clad in white, like the dawn bathed in
+radiance. And I said, "Make me proud by allowing me to help you!"
+
+
+DEVAYANI
+
+I asked in surprise who you were, and you meekly answered that you were the
+son of Vrihaspati, a divine sage at the court of the God Indra, and desired
+to learn from my father that secret spell which can revive the dead.
+
+
+KACHA
+
+I feared lest the Master, the teacher of the Titans, those rivals of the
+Gods, should refuse to accept me for a disciple.
+
+
+DEVAYANI
+
+But he could not refuse me when I pleaded your cause, so greatly he loves
+his daughter.
+
+
+KACHA
+
+Thrice had the jealous Titans slain me, and thrice you prevailed on your
+father to bring me back to life; therefore my gratitude can never die.
+
+
+DEVAYANI
+
+Gratitude! Forget all--I shall not grieve. Do you only remember benefits?
+Let them perish! If after the day's lessons, in the evening solitude, some
+strange tremor of joy shook your heart, remember that--but not gratitude.
+If, as some one passed, a snatch of song got tangled among your texts or
+the swing of a robe fluttered your studies with delight, remember that when
+at leisure in your Paradise. What, benefits only!--and neither beauty nor
+love nor...?
+
+
+KACHA
+
+Some things are beyond the power of words.
+
+
+DEVAYANI
+
+Yes, yes, I know. My love has sounded your heart's deepest, and makes me
+bold to speak in defiance of your reserve. Never leave me! remain here!
+fame gives no happiness. Friend, you cannot now escape, for your secret is
+mine!
+
+
+KACHA
+
+No, no, Devayani.
+
+
+DEVAYANI
+
+How "No"? Do not lie to me! Love's insight is divine. Day after day, in
+raising your head, in a glance, in the motion of your hands, your love
+spoke as the sea speaks through its waves. On a sudden my voice would send
+your heart quivering through your limbs--have I never witnessed it? I know
+you, and therefore you are my captive for ever. The very king of your Gods
+shall not sever this bond.
+
+
+KACHA
+
+Was it for this, Devayani, that I toiled, away from home and kindred, all
+these years?
+
+
+DEVAYANI
+
+Why not? Is only knowledge precious? Is love cheap? Lay hold on this
+moment. Have the courage to own that a woman's heart is worth all as much
+penance as men undergo for the sake of power, knowledge, or reputation.
+
+
+KACHA
+
+I gave my solemn promise to the Gods that I would bring them this lore of
+deathless life.
+
+
+DEVAYANI
+
+But is it true you had eyes for nothing save your books? That you never
+broke off your studies to pay me homage with flowers, never lay in wait for
+a chance, of an evening, to help me water my flower-beds? What made you sit
+by me on the grass and sing songs you brought hither from the assembly of
+the stars, while darkness stooped over the river bank as love droops over
+its own sad silence? Were these parts of a cruel conspiracy plotted in your
+Paradise? Was all for the sake of access to my father's heart?--and after
+success, were you, departing, to throw some cheap gratitude, like small
+coins, to the deluded door-keeper?
+
+
+KACHA
+
+What profit were there, proud woman, in knowing the truth? If I did wrong
+to serve you with a passionate devotion cherished in secret, I have had
+ample punishment. This is no time to question whether my love be true or
+not; my life's work awaits me. Though my heart must henceforth enclose a
+red flame vainly striving to devour emptiness, still I must go back to that
+Paradise which will nevermore be Paradise to me. I owe the Gods a new
+divinity, hard won by my studies, before I may think of happiness. Forgive
+me, Devayani, and know that my suffering is doubled by the pain I
+unwillingly inflict on you.
+
+
+DEVAYANI
+
+Forgiveness! You have angered my heart till it is hard and burning like a
+thunderbolt! You can go back to your work and your glory, but what is left
+for me? Memory is a bed of thorns, and secret shame will gnaw at the roots
+of my life. You came like a wayfarer, sat through the sunny hours in the
+shade of my garden, and to while time away you plucked all its flowers and
+wove them into a chain. And now, parting, you snap the thread and let the
+flowers drop on the dust! Accursed be that great knowledge you have
+earned!--a burden that, though others share equally with you, will never be
+lightened. For lack of love may it ever remain as foreign to your life as
+the cold stars are to the un-espoused darkness of virgin Night!
+
+
+
+21
+
+
+I
+
+"Why these preparations without end?"--I said to Mind--"Is some one to
+come?"
+
+Mind replied, "I am enormously busy gathering things and building towers. I
+have no time to answer such questions."
+
+Meekly I went back to my work.
+
+When things were grown to a pile, when seven wings of his palace were
+complete, I said to Mind, "Is it not enough?"
+
+Mind began to say, "Not enough to contain--" and then stopped.
+
+"Contain what?" I asked.
+
+Mind affected not to hear.
+
+I suspected that Mind did not know, and with ceaseless work smothered the
+question.
+
+His one refrain was, "I must have more."
+
+"Why must you?"
+
+"Because it is great."
+
+"What is great?"
+
+Mind remained silent. I pressed for an answer.
+
+In contempt and anger, Mind said, "Why ask about things that are not? Take
+notice of those that are hugely before you,--the struggle and the fight,
+the army and armaments, the bricks and mortar, and labourers without
+number."
+
+I thought "Possibly Mind is wise."
+
+
+II
+
+Days passed. More wings were added to his palace--more lands to his domain.
+
+The season of rains came to an end. The dark clouds became white and thin,
+and in the rain-washed sky the sunny hours hovered like butterflies over an
+unseen flower. I was bewildered and asked everybody I met, "What is that
+music in the breeze?"
+
+A tramp walked the road whose dress was wild as his manner; he said, "Hark
+to the music of the Coming!"
+
+I cannot tell why I was convinced, but the words broke from me, "We have
+not much longer to wait."
+
+"It is close at hand," said the mad man.
+
+I went to the office and boldly said to Mind, "Stop all work!"
+
+Mind asked, "Have you any news?"
+
+"Yes," I answered, "News of the Coming." But I could not explain.
+
+Mind shook his head and said, "There are neither banners nor pageantry!"
+
+
+III
+
+The night waned, the stars paled in the sky. Suddenly the touchstone of the
+morning light tinged everything with gold. A cry spread from mouth to
+mouth--
+
+"Here is the herald!"
+
+I bowed my head and asked, "Is he coming?"
+
+The answer seemed to burst from all sides, "Yes."
+
+Mind grew troubled and said, "The dome of my building is not yet finished,
+nothing is in order."
+
+A voice came from the sky, "Pull down your building!"
+
+"But why?" asked Mind.
+
+"Because to-day is the day of the Coming, and your building is in the way."
+
+
+IV
+
+The lofty building lies in the dust and all is scattered and broken.
+
+Mind looked about. But what was there to see?
+
+Only the morning star and the lily washed in dew.
+
+And what else? A child running laughing from its mother's arms into the
+open light.
+
+"Was it only for this that they said it was the day of the Coming?"
+
+"Yes, this was why they said there was music in the air and light in the
+sky."
+
+"And did they claim all the earth only for this?"
+
+"Yes," came the answer. "Mind, you build walls to imprison yourself. Your
+servants toil to enslave themselves; but the whole earth and infinite space
+are for the child, for the New Life."
+
+"What does that child bring you?"
+
+"Hope for all the world and its joy."
+
+Mind asked me, "Poet, do you understand?"
+
+"I lay my work aside," I said, "for I must have time to understand."
+
+
+
+22
+
+TRANSLATIONS
+
+
+VAISHNAVA SONGS
+
+
+
+1
+
+
+Oh Sakhi,[1] my sorrow knows no bounds.
+
+[Footnote 1: The woman friend of a woman.]
+
+August comes laden with rain clouds and my house is desolate.
+
+The stormy sky growls, the earth is flooded with rain, my love is far away,
+and my heart is torn with anguish.
+
+The peacocks dance, for the clouds rumble and frogs croak.
+
+The night brims with darkness flicked with lightning.
+
+Vidyapati[2] asks, "Maiden, how are you to spend your days and nights
+without your lord?"
+
+[Footnote 2: The name of the poet.]
+
+
+
+2
+
+
+Lucky was my awakening this morning, for I saw my beloved.
+
+The sky was one piece of joy, and my life and youth were fulfilled.
+
+To-day my house becomes my house in truth, and my body my body.
+
+Fortune has proved a friend, and my doubts are dispelled.
+
+Birds, sing your best; moon, shed your fairest light!
+
+Let fly your darts, Love-God, in millions!
+
+I wait for the moment when my body will grow golden at his touch.
+
+Vidyapati says, "Immense is your good fortune, and blessed is your love."
+
+
+
+3
+
+
+I feel my body vanishing into the dust whereon my beloved walks.
+
+I feel one with the water of the lake where he bathes.
+
+Oh Sakhi, my love crosses death's boundary when I meet him.
+
+My heart melts in the light and merges in the mirror whereby he views his
+face.
+
+I move with the air to kiss him when he waves his fan, and wherever he
+wanders I enclose him like the sky.
+
+Govindadas says, "You are the gold-setting, fair maiden, he is the
+emerald."
+
+
+
+4
+
+
+My love, I will keep you hidden in my eyes; I will thread your image like a
+gem on my joy and hang it on my bosom.
+
+You have been in my heart ever since I was a child, throughout my youth,
+throughout my life, even through all my dreams.
+
+You dwell in my being when I sleep and when I wake.
+
+Know that I am a woman, and bear with me when you find me wanting.
+
+For I have thought and thought and know for certain that all that is left
+for me in this world is your love, and if I lose you for a moment I die.
+
+Chandidas says, "Be tender to her who is yours in life and death."
+
+
+
+5
+
+
+"Fruit to sell, Fruit to sell," cried the woman at the door.
+
+The Child came out of the house.
+
+"Give me some fruit," said he, putting a handful of rice in her basket.
+
+The fruit-seller gazed at his face and her eyes swam with tears.
+
+"Who is the fortunate mother," she cried, "that has clasped you in her arms
+and fed you at her breast, and whom your dear voice called 'Mother'?"
+
+"Offer your fruit to him," says the poet, "and with it your life."
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+
+1
+
+
+Endlessly varied art thou in the exuberant world, Lady of Manifold
+Magnificence. Thy path is strewn with lights, thy touch thrills into
+flowers; that trailing skirt of thine sweeps the whirl of a dance among the
+stars, and thy many-toned music is echoed from innumerable worlds through
+signs and colours.
+
+Single and alone in the unfathomed stillness of the soul, art thou, Lady of
+Silence and Solitude, a vision thrilled with light, a lonely lotus
+blossoming on the stem of love.
+
+
+
+2
+
+
+Behind the rusty iron gratings of the opposite window sits a girl, dark and
+plain of face, like a boat stranded on a sand-bank when the river is
+shallow in the summer.
+
+I come back to my room after my day's work, and my tired eyes are lured to
+her.
+
+She seems to me like a lake with its dark lonely waters edged by moonlight.
+
+She has only her window for freedom: there the morning light meets her
+musings, and through it her dark eyes like lost stars travel back to their
+sky.
+
+
+
+3
+
+
+I remember the day.
+
+The heavy shower of rain is slackening into fitful pauses, renewed gusts of
+wind startle it from a first lull.
+
+I take up my instrument. Idly I touch the strings, till, without my
+knowing, the music borrows the mad cadence of that storm.
+
+I see her figure as she steals from her work, stops at my door, and
+retreats with hesitating steps. She comes again, stands outside leaning
+against the wall, then slowly enters the room and sits down. With head
+bent, she plies her needle in silence; but soon stops her work, and looks
+out of the window through the rain at the blurred line of trees.
+
+Only this--one hour of a rainy noon filled with shadows and song and
+silence.
+
+
+
+4
+
+
+While stepping into the carriage she turned her head and threw me a swift
+glance of farewell.
+
+This was her last gift to me. But where can I keep it safe from the
+trampling hours?
+
+Must evening sweep this gleam of anguish away, as it will the last flicker
+of fire from the sunset?
+
+Ought it to be washed off by the rain, as treasured pollens are from
+heart-broken flowers?
+
+Leave kingly glory and the wealth of the rich to death. But may not tears
+keep ever fresh the memory of a glance flung through a passionate moment?
+
+"Give it to me to keep," said my song; "I never touch kings' glory or the
+wealth of the rich, but these small things are mine for ever."
+
+
+
+5
+
+
+You give yourself to me, like a flower that blossoms at night, whose
+presence is known by the dew that drips from it, by the odour shed through
+the darkness, as the first steps of Spring are by the buds that thicken the
+twigs.
+
+You break upon my thought like waves at the high tide, and my heart is
+drowned under surging songs.
+
+My heart knew of your coming, as the night feels the approach of dawn. The
+clouds are aflame and my sky fills with a great revealing flood.
+
+
+
+6
+
+
+I was to go away; still she did not speak. But I felt, from a slight
+quiver, her yearning arms would say: "Ah no, not yet."
+
+I have often heard her pleading hands vocal in a touch, though they knew
+not what they said.
+
+I have known those arms to stammer when, had they not, they would have
+become youth's garland round my neck.
+
+Their little gestures return to remembrance in the covert of still hours,
+like truants they playfully reveal things she had kept secret from me.
+
+
+
+7
+
+
+My songs are like bees; they follow through the air some fragrant
+trace--some memory--of you, to hum around your shyness, eager for its
+hidden store.
+
+When the freshness of dawn droops in the sun, when in the noon the air
+hangs low with heaviness and the forest is silent, my songs return home,
+their languid wings dusted with gold.
+
+
+
+8
+
+
+I believe you had visited me in a vision before we ever met, like some
+foretaste of April before the spring broke into flower.
+
+That vision must have come when all was bathed in the odour of _sal_
+blossom; when the twilight twinkle of the river fringed its yellow sands,
+and the vague sounds of a summer afternoon were blended; yes, and had it
+not laughed and evaded me in many a nameless gleam at other moments?
+
+
+
+9
+
+
+I think I shall stop startled if ever we meet after our next birth, walking
+in the light of a far-away world.
+
+I shall know those dark eyes then as morning stars, and yet feel that they
+have belonged to some unremembered evening sky of a former life.
+
+I shall know that the magic of your face is not all its own, but has stolen
+the passionate light that was in my eyes at some immemorial meeting, and
+then gathered from my love a mystery that has now forgotten its origin.
+
+
+
+10
+
+
+Lay down your lute, my love, leave your arms free to embrace me.
+
+Let your touch bring my overflowing heart to my body's utmost brink.
+
+Do not bend your neck and turn away your face, but offer up a kiss to me,
+which has been like some perfume long closed in a bud.
+
+Do not smother this moment under vain words, but let our hearts quake in a
+rush of silence sweeping all thoughts to the shoreless delight.
+
+
+
+11
+
+
+You have made me great with your love, though I am but one among the many,
+drifting in the common tide, rocking in the fluctuant favour of the world.
+
+You have given me a seat where poets of all time bring their tribute, and
+lovers with deathless names greet one another across the ages.
+
+Men hastily pass me in the market,--never noting how my body has grown
+precious with your caress, how I carry your kiss within, as the sun carries
+in its orb the fire of the divine touch and shines for ever.
+
+
+
+12
+
+
+Like a child that frets and pushes away its toys, my heart to-day shakes
+its head at every phrase I suggest, and says, "No, not this."
+
+Yet words, in the agony of their vagueness, haunt my mind, like vagrant
+clouds hovering over hills, waiting for some chance wind to relieve them of
+their rain.
+
+
+But leave these vain efforts, my soul, for the stillness will ripen its own
+music in the dark.
+
+My life to-day is like a cloister during some penance, where the spring is
+afraid to stir or to whisper.
+
+This is not the time, my love, for you to pass the gate; at the mere
+thought of your anklet bells tinkling down the path, the garden echoes are
+ashamed.
+
+Know that to-morrow's songs are in bud to-day, and should they see you walk
+by they would strain to breaking their immature hearts.
+
+
+
+13
+
+
+Whence do you bring this disquiet, my love?
+
+Let my heart touch yours and kiss the pain out of your silence.
+
+The night has thrown up from its depth this little hour, that love may
+build a new world within these shut doors, to be lighted by this solitary
+lamp.
+
+We have for music but a single reed which our two pairs of lips must play
+on by turns--for crown, only one garland to bind my hair after I have put
+it on your forehead.
+
+Tearing the veil from my breast I shall make our bed on the floor; and one
+kiss and one sleep of delight shall fill our small boundless world.
+
+
+
+14
+
+
+All that I had I gave to you, keeping but the barest veil of reserve.
+
+It is so thin that you secretly smile at it and I feel ashamed.
+
+The gust of the spring breeze sweeps it away unawares, and the flutter of
+my own heart moves it as the waves move their foam.
+
+My love, do not grieve if I keep this flimsy mist of distance round me.
+
+This frail reserve of mine is no mere woman's coyness, but a slender stem
+on which the flower of my self-surrender bends towards you with reticent
+grace.
+
+
+
+15
+
+
+I have donned this new robe to-day because my body feels like singing.
+
+It is not enough that I am given to my love once and for ever, but out of
+that I must fashion new gifts every day; and shall I not seem a fresh
+offering, dressed in a new robe?
+
+My heart, like the evening sky, has its endless passion for colour, and
+therefore I change my veils, which have now the green of the cool young
+grass and now that of the winter rice.
+
+To-day my robe is tinted with the rain-rimmed blue of the sky. It brings to
+my limbs the colour of the boundless, the colour of the oversea hills; and
+it carries in its folds the delight of summer clouds flying in the wind.
+
+
+
+16
+
+
+I thought I would write love's words in their own colour; but that lies
+deep in the heart, and tears are pale.
+
+Would you know them, friend, if the words were colourless?
+
+I thought I would sing love's words to their own tune, but that sounds only
+in my heart, and my eyes are silent.
+
+Would you know them, friend, if there were no tune?
+
+
+
+17
+
+
+In the night the song came to me; but you were not there.
+
+It found the words for which I had been seeking all day. Yes, in the
+stillness a moment after dark they throbbed into music, even as the stars
+then began to pulse with light; but you were not there. My hope was to sing
+it to you in the morning; but, try as I might, though the music came, the
+words hung back, when you were beside me.
+
+
+
+18
+
+
+The night deepens and the dying flame flickers in the lamp.
+
+I forgot to notice when the evening--like a village girl who has filled her
+pitcher at the river a last time for that day--closed the door on her
+cabin.
+
+I was speaking to you, my love, with mind barely conscious of my
+voice--tell me, had it any meaning? Did it bring you any message from
+beyond life's borders?
+
+For now, since my voice has ceased, I feel the night throbbing with
+thoughts that gaze in awe at the abyss of their dumbness.
+
+
+
+19
+
+
+When we two first met my heart rang out in music, "She who is eternally
+afar is beside you for ever."
+
+That music is silent, because I have grown to believe that my love is only
+near, and have forgotten that she is also far, far away.
+
+Music fills the infinite between two souls. This has been muffled by the
+mist of our daily habits.
+
+On shy summer nights, when the breeze brings a vast murmur out of the
+silence, I sit up in my bed and mourn the great loss of her who is beside
+me. I ask myself, "When shall I have another chance to whisper to her words
+with the rhythm of eternity in them?"
+
+Wake up, my song, from thy languor, rend this screen of the familiar, and
+fly to my beloved there, in the endless surprise of our first meeting!
+
+
+
+20
+
+
+Lovers come to you, my Queen, and proudly lay their riches at your feet:
+but my tribute is made up of unfulfilled hopes.
+
+Shadows have stolen across the heart of my world and the best in me has
+lost light.
+
+While the fortunate laugh at my penury, I ask you to lend my failings your
+tears, and so make them precious.
+
+
+I bring you a voiceless instrument.
+
+I strained to reach a note which was too high in my heart, and the string
+broke.
+
+While masters laugh at the snapped cord, I ask you to take my lute in your
+hands and fill its hollowness with your songs.
+
+
+
+21
+
+
+The father came back from the funeral rites.
+
+His boy of seven stood at the window, with eyes wide open and a golden
+amulet hanging from his neck, full of thoughts too difficult for his age.
+
+His father took him in his arms and the boy asked him, "Where is mother?"
+
+"In heaven," answered his father, pointing to the sky.
+
+
+At night the father groaned in slumber, weary with grief.
+
+A lamp dimly burned near the bedroom door, and a lizard chased moths on the
+wall.
+
+The boy woke up from sleep, felt with his hands the emptiness in the bed,
+and stole out to the open terrace.
+
+The boy raised his eyes to the sky and long gazed in silence. His
+bewildered mind sent abroad into the night the question, "Where is heaven?"
+
+No answer came: and the stars seemed like the burning tears of that
+ignorant darkness.
+
+
+
+22
+
+
+She went away when the night was about to wane.
+
+My mind tried to console me by saying, "All is vanity."
+
+I felt angry and said, "That unopened letter with her name on it, and this
+palm-leaf fan bordered with red silk by her own hands, are they not real?"
+
+The day passed, and my friend came and said to me, "Whatever is good is
+true, and can never perish."
+
+"How do you know?" I asked impatiently; "was not this body good which is
+now lost to the world?"
+
+
+As a fretful child hurting its own mother, I tried to wreck all the
+shelters that ever I had, in and about me, and cried, "This world is
+treacherous."
+
+Suddenly I felt a voice saying--"Ungrateful!"
+
+I looked out of the window, and a reproach seemed to come from the
+star-sprinkled night,--"You pour out into the void of my absence your faith
+in the truth that I came!"
+
+
+
+23
+
+
+The river is grey and the air dazed with blown sand.
+
+On a morning of dark disquiet, when the birds are mute and their nests
+shake in the gust, I sit alone and ask myself, "Where is she?"
+
+The days have flown wherein we sat too near each other; we laughed and
+jested, and the awe of love's majesty found no words at our meetings.
+
+I made myself small, and she trifled away every moment with pelting talk.
+
+To-day I wish in vain that she were by me, in the gloom of the coming
+storm, to sit in the soul's solitude.
+
+
+
+24
+
+
+The name she called me by, like a flourishing jasmine, covered the whole
+seventeen years of our love. With its sound mingled the quiver of the light
+through the leaves, the scent of the grass in the rainy night, and the sad
+silence of the last hour of many an idle day.
+
+Not the work of God alone was he who answered to that name; she created him
+again for herself during those seventeen swift years.
+
+Other years were to follow, but their vagrant days, no longer gathered
+within the fold of that name uttered in her voice, stray and are scattered.
+
+They ask me, "Who should fold us?"
+
+I find no answer and sit silent, and they cry to me while dispersing, "We
+seek a shepherdess!"
+
+Whom should they seek?
+
+That they do not know. And like derelict evening clouds they drift in the
+trackless dark, and are lost and forgotten.
+
+
+
+25
+
+
+I feel that your brief days of love have not been left behind in those
+scanty years of your life.
+
+I seek to know in what place, away from the slow-thieving dust, you keep
+them now. I find in my solitude some song of your evening that died, yet
+left a deathless echo; and the sighs of your unsatisfied hours I find
+nestled in the warm quiet of the autumn noon.
+
+Your desires come from the hive of the past to haunt my heart, and I sit
+still to listen to their wings.
+
+
+
+26
+
+
+You have taken a bath in the dark sea. You are once again veiled in a
+bride's robe, and through death's arch you come back to repeat our wedding
+in the soul.
+
+Neither lute nor drum is struck, no crowd has gathered, not a wreath is
+hung on the gate.
+
+Your unuttered words meet mine in a ritual unillumined by lamps.
+
+
+
+27
+
+
+I was walking along a path overgrown with grass, when suddenly I heard from
+some one behind, "See if you know me?"
+
+I turned round and looked at her and said, "I cannot remember your name."
+
+She said, "I am that first great Sorrow whom you met when you were young."
+
+Her eyes looked like a morning whose dew is still in the air.
+
+I stood silent for some time till I said, "Have you lost all the great
+burden of your tears?"
+
+She smiled and said nothing. I felt that her tears had had time to learn
+the language of smiles.
+
+"Once you said," she whispered, "that you would cherish your grief for
+ever."
+
+I blushed and said, "Yes, but years have passed and I forget."
+
+Then I took her hand in mine and said, "But you have changed."
+
+"What was sorrow once has now become peace," she said.
+
+
+
+28
+
+
+Our life sails on the uncrossed sea whose waves chase each other in an
+eternal hide-and-seek.
+
+It is the restless sea of change, feeding its foaming flocks to lose them
+over and over again, beating its hands against the calm of the sky.
+
+Love, in the centre of this circling war-dance of light and dark, yours is
+that green island, where the sun kisses the shy forest shade and silence is
+wooed by birds' singing.
+
+
+
+29
+
+AMA AND VINAYAKA
+
+
+AMA AND VINAYAKA
+
+_Night on the battlefield:_ AMA _meets her father_ VINAYAKA.
+
+
+AMA
+
+Father!
+
+
+VINAYAKA
+
+Shameless wanton, you call me "Father"! you who did not shrink from a
+Mussulman husband!
+
+
+AMA
+
+Though you have treacherously killed my husband, yet you are my father; and
+I hold back a widow's tears, lest they bring God's curse on you. Since we
+have met on this battlefield after years of separation, let me bow to your
+feet and take my last leave!
+
+
+VINAYAKA
+
+Where will you go, Ama? The tree on which you built your impious nest is
+hewn down. Where will _you_ take shelter?
+
+
+AMA
+
+I have my son.
+
+
+VINAYAKA
+
+Leave him! Cast never a fond look back on the result of a sin expiated with
+blood! Think where to go.
+
+
+AMA
+
+Death's open gates are wider than a father's love!
+
+
+VINAYAKA
+
+Death indeed swallows sins as the sea swallows the mud of rivers. But you
+are to die neither to-night nor here. Seek some solitary shrine of holy
+Shiva far from shamed kindred and all neighbours; bathe three times a day
+in sacred Ganges, and, while reciting God's name, listen to the last bell
+of evening worship, that Death may look tenderly upon you, as a father on
+his sleeping child whose eyes are still wet with tears. Let him gently
+carry you into his own great silence, as the Ganges carries a fallen flower
+on its stream, washing every stain away to render it, a fit offering, to
+the sea.
+
+
+AMA
+
+But my son----
+
+
+VINAYAKA
+
+Again I bid you not to speak of him. Lay yourself once more in a father's
+arms, my child, like a babe fresh from the womb of Oblivion, your second
+mother.
+
+
+AMA
+
+To me the world has become a shadow. Your words I hear, but cannot take to
+heart. Leave me, father, leave me alone! Do not try to bind me with your
+love, for its bands are red with my husband's blood.
+
+
+VINAYAKA
+
+Alas! no flower ever returns to the parent branch it dropped from. How can
+you call him _husband_ who forcibly snatched you from Jivaji to whom you
+had been sacredly affianced? I shall never forget that night! In the
+wedding hall we sat anxiously expecting the bridegroom, for the auspicious
+hour was dwindling away. Then in the distance appeared the glare of
+torches, and bridal strains came floating up the air. We shouted for joy:
+women blew their conch-shells. A procession of palanquins entered the
+courtyard: but while we were asking, "Where is Jivaji?" armed men burst out
+of the litters like a storm, and bore you off before we knew what had
+happened. Shortly after, Jivaji came to tell us he had been waylaid and
+captured by a Mussulman noble of the Vijapur court. That night Jivaji and I
+touched the nuptial fire and swore bloody death to this villain. After
+waiting long, we have been freed from our solemn pledge to-night; and the
+spirit of Jivaji, who lost his life in this battle, lawfully claims you for
+wife.
+
+
+AMA
+
+Father, it may be that I have disgraced the rites of your house, but my
+honour is unsullied; I loved him to whom I bore a son. I remember the night
+when I received two secret messages, one from you, one from my mother;
+yours said: "I send you the knife; kill him!" My mother's: "I send you the
+poison; end your life!" Had unholy force dishonoured me, your double
+bidding had been obeyed. But my body was yielded only after love had given
+_me_--love all the greater, all the purer, in that it overcame the
+hereditary recoil of our blood from the Mussulman.
+
+_Enter_ RAMA, AMA'S _mother_
+
+
+AMA
+
+Mother mine, I had not hoped to see you again. Let me take dust from your
+feet.
+
+
+RAMA
+
+Touch me not with impure hands!
+
+
+AMA
+
+I am as pure as yourself.
+
+
+RAMA
+
+To whom have you surrendered your honour?
+
+
+AMA
+
+To my husband.
+
+
+RAMA
+
+Husband? A Mussulman the husband of a Brahmin woman?
+
+
+AMA
+
+I do not merit contempt: I am proud to say I never despised my husband
+though a Mussulman. If Paradise will reward your devotion to your husband,
+then the same Paradise waits for your daughter, who has been as true a
+wife.
+
+
+RAMA
+
+Are you indeed a true wife?
+
+
+AMA
+
+Yes.
+
+
+RAMA
+
+Do you know how to die without flinching?
+
+
+AMA
+
+I do.
+
+
+RAMA
+
+Then let the funeral fire be lighted for you! See, there lies the body of
+your husband.
+
+
+AMA
+
+Jivaji?
+
+
+RAMA
+
+Yes, Jivaji. He was your husband by plighted troth. The baffled fire of the
+nuptial God has raged into the hungry fire of death, and the interrupted
+wedding shall be completed now.
+
+
+VINAYAKA
+
+Do not listen, my child. Go back to your son, to your own nest darkened
+with sorrow. My duty has been performed to its extreme cruel end, and
+nothing now remains for you to do.--Wife, your grief is fruitless. Were the
+branch dead which was violently snapped from our tree, I should give it to
+the fire. But it has sent living roots into a new soil and is bearing
+flowers and fruits. Allow her, without regret, to obey the laws of those
+among whom she has loved. Come, wife, it is time we cut all worldly ties
+and spent our remainder lives in the seclusion of some peaceful pilgrim
+shrine.
+
+
+RAMA
+
+I am ready: but first must tread into dust every sprout of sin and shame
+that has sprung from the soil of our life. A daughter's infamy stains her
+mother's honour. That black shame shall feed glowing fire to-night, and
+raise a true wife's memorial over the ashes of my daughter.
+
+
+AMA
+
+Mother, if by force you unite me in death with one who was not my husband,
+then will you bring a curse upon yourself for desecrating the shrine of the
+Eternal Lord of Death.
+
+
+RAMA
+
+Soldiers, light the fire; surround the woman!
+
+
+AMA
+
+Father!
+
+
+VINAYAKA
+
+Do not fear. Alas, my child, that you should ever have to call your father
+to save you from your mother's hands!
+
+
+AMA
+
+Father!
+
+
+VINAYAKA
+
+Come to me, my darling child! Mere vanity are these man-made laws,
+splashing like spray against the rock of heaven's ordinance. Bring your son
+to me, and we will live together, my daughter. A father's love, like God's
+rain, does not judge but is poured forth from an abounding source.
+
+
+RAMA
+
+Where would you go? Turn back!--Soldiers, stand firm in your loyalty to
+your master Jivaji! do your last sacred duty by him!
+
+
+AMA
+
+Father!
+
+
+VINAYAKA
+
+Free her, soldiers! She is my daughter.
+
+
+SOLDIERS
+
+She is the widow of our master.
+
+
+VINAYAKA
+
+Her husband, though a Mussulman, was staunch in his own faith.
+
+
+RAMA
+
+Soldiers, keep this old man under control!
+
+
+AMA
+
+I defy you, mother!--You, soldiers, I defy!--for through death and love I
+win to freedom.
+
+
+
+30
+
+
+A painter was selling pictures at the fair; followed by servants, there
+passed the son of a minister who in youth had cheated this painter's father
+so that he had died of a broken heart.
+
+The boy lingered before the pictures and chose one for himself. The painter
+flung a cloth over it and said he would not sell it.
+
+After this the boy pined heart-sick till his father came and offered a
+large price. But the painter kept the picture unsold on his shop-wall and
+grimly sat before it, saying to himself, "This is my revenge."
+
+
+The sole form this painter's worship took was to trace an image of his god
+every morning.
+
+And now he felt these pictures grow daily more different from those he used
+to paint.
+
+This troubled him, and he sought in vain for an explanation till one day he
+started up from work in horror, the eyes of the god he had just drawn were
+those of the minister, and so were the lips.
+
+He tore up the picture, crying, "My revenge has returned on my head!"
+
+
+
+31
+
+
+The General came before the silent and angry King and saluting him said:
+"The village is punished, the men are stricken to dust, and the women cower
+in their unlit homes afraid to weep aloud."
+
+The High Priest stood up and blessed the King and cried: "God's mercy is
+ever upon you."
+
+The Clown, when he heard this, burst out laughing and startled the court.
+The King's frown darkened.
+
+"The honour of the throne," said the minister, "is upheld by the King's
+prowess and the blessing of Almighty God."
+
+Louder laughed the Clown, and the King growled,--"Unseemly mirth!"
+
+"God has showered many blessings upon your head," said the Clown; "the one
+he bestowed on me was the gift of laughter."
+
+"This gift will cost you your life," said the King, gripping his sword with
+his right hand.
+
+Yet the Clown stood up and laughed till he laughed no more.
+
+A shadow of dread fell upon the Court, for they heard that laughter echoing
+in the depth of God's silence.
+
+
+
+32
+
+THE MOTHER'S PRAYER
+
+
+THE MOTHER'S PRAYER
+
+_Prince Duryodhana, the son of the blind Kaurava King Dhritarashtra, and of
+Queen Gandhari, has played with his cousins the Pandava Kings for their
+kingdom, and won it by fraud._
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+You have compassed your end.
+
+
+DURYODHANA
+
+Success is mine!
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+Are you happy?
+
+
+DURYODHANA
+
+I am victorious.
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+I ask you again, what happiness have you in winning the undivided kingdom?
+
+
+DURYODHANA
+
+Sire, a Kshatriya thirsts not after happiness but victory, that fiery wine
+pressed from seething jealousy. Wretchedly happy we were, like those
+inglorious stains that lie idly on the breast of the moon, when we lived in
+peace under the friendly dominance of our cousins. Then these Pandavas
+milked the world of its wealth, and allowed us a share, in brotherly
+tolerance. Now that they own defeat and expect banishment, I am no longer
+happy but exultant.
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+Wretch, you forget that both Pandavas and Kauravas have the same
+forefathers.
+
+
+DURYODHANA
+
+It was difficult to forget that, and therefore our inequalities rankled in
+my heart. At midnight the moon is never jealous of the noonday sun. But the
+struggle to share one horizon between both orbs cannot last forever. Thank
+heaven, that struggle is over, and we have at last won solitude in glory.
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+The mean jealousy!
+
+
+DURYODHANA
+
+Jealousy is never mean--it is in the essence of greatness. Grass can grow
+in crowded amity, not giant trees. Stars live in clusters, but the sun and
+moon are lonely in their splendour. The pale moon of the Pandavas sets
+behind the forest shadows, leaving the new-risen sun of the Kauravas to
+rejoice.
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+But right has been defeated.
+
+
+DURYODHANA
+
+Right for rulers is not what is right in the eyes of the people. The people
+thrive by comradeship: but for a king, equals are enemies. They are
+obstacles ahead, they are terrors from behind. There is no place for
+brothers or friends in a king's polity; its one solid foundation is
+conquest.
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+I refuse to call a conquest what was won by fraud in gambling.
+
+
+DURYODHANA
+
+A man is not shamed by refusing to challenge a tiger on equal terms with
+teeth and nails. Our weapons are those proper for success, not for suicide.
+Father, I am proud of the result and disdain regret for the means.
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+But justice----
+
+
+DURYODHANA
+
+Fools alone dream of justice--success is not yet theirs: but those born to
+rule rely on power, merciless and unhampered with scruples.
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+Your success will bring down on you a loud and angry flood of detraction.
+
+
+DURYODHANA
+
+The people will take amazingly little time to learn that Duryodhana is king
+and has power to crush calumny under foot.
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+Calumny dies of weariness dancing on tongue-tips. Do not drive it into the
+heart to gather strength.
+
+
+DURYODHANA
+
+Unuttered defamation does not touch a king's dignity. I care not if love is
+refused us, but insolence shall not be borne. Love depends upon the will of
+the giver, and the poorest of the poor can indulge in such generosity. Let
+them squander it on their pet cats, tame dogs, and our good cousins the
+Pandavas. I shall never envy them. Fear is the tribute I claim for my royal
+throne. Father, only too leniently you lent your ear to those who slandered
+your sons: but if you intend still to allow those pious friends of yours to
+revel in shrill denunciation at the expense of your children, let us
+exchange our kingdom for the exile of our cousins, and go to the
+wilderness, where happily friends are never cheap!
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+Could the pious warnings of my friends lessen my love for my sons, then we
+might be saved. But I have dipped my hands in the mire of your infamy and
+lost my sense of goodness. For your sakes I have heedlessly set fire to the
+ancient forest of our royal lineage--so dire is my love. Clasped breast to
+breast, we, like a double meteor, are blindly plunging into ruin. Therefore
+doubt not my love; relax not your embrace till the brink of annihilation be
+reached. Beat your drums of victory, lift your banner of triumph. In this
+mad riot of exultant evil, brothers and friends will disperse till nothing
+remain save the doomed father, the doomed son and God's curse.
+
+
+_Enter an Attendant_
+
+Sire, Queen Gandhari asks for audience.
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+I await her.
+
+
+DURYODHANA
+
+Let me take my leave. [_Exit._
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+Fly! For you cannot bear the fire of your mother's presence.
+
+
+_Enter_ QUEEN GANDHARI, _the mother of_ DURYODHANA
+
+
+GANDHARI
+
+At your feet I crave a boon.
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+Speak, your wish is fulfilled.
+
+
+GANDHARI
+
+The time has come to renounce him.
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+Whom, my queen?
+
+
+GANDHARI
+
+Duryodhana!
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+Our own son, Duryodhana?
+
+
+GANDHARI
+
+Yes!
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+This is a terrible boon for you, his mother, to crave!
+
+
+GANDHARI
+
+The fathers of the Kauravas, who are in Paradise, join me in beseeching
+you.
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+The divine Judge will punish him who has broken His laws. But I am his
+father.
+
+
+GANDHARI
+
+Am I not his mother? Have I not carried him under my throbbing heart? Yes,
+I ask you to renounce Duryodhana the unrighteous.
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+What will remain to us after that?
+
+
+GANDHARI
+
+God's blessing.
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+And what will that bring us?
+
+
+GANDHARI
+
+New afflictions. Pleasure in our son's presence, pride in a new kingdom,
+and shame at knowing both purchased by wrong done or connived at, like
+thorns dragged two ways, would lacerate our bosoms. The Pandavas are too
+proud ever to accept back from us the lands which they have relinquished;
+therefore it is only meet that we draw some great sorrow down on our heads
+so as to deprive that unmerited reward of its sting.
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+Queen, you inflict fresh pain on a heart already rent.
+
+
+GANDHARI
+
+Sire, the punishment imposed on our son will be more ours than his. A judge
+callous to the pain that he inflicts loses the right to judge. And if you
+spare your son to save yourself pain, then all the culprits ever punished
+by your hands will cry before God's throne for vengeance,--had they not
+also their fathers?
+
+
+DHRITARASHTRA
+
+No more of this, Queen, I pray you. Our son is abandoned of God: that is
+why I cannot give him up. To save him is no longer in my power, and
+therefore my consolation is to share his guilt and tread the path of
+destruction, his solitary companion. What is done is done; let follow what
+must follow!                            [_Exit._
+
+
+GANDHARI
+
+Be calm, my heart, and patiently await God's judgment. Oblivious night
+wears on, the morning of reckoning nears, I hear the thundering roar of its
+chariot. Woman, bow your head down to the dust! and as a sacrifice fling
+your heart under those wheels! Darkness will shroud the sky, earth will
+tremble, wailing will rend the air and then comes the silent and cruel
+end,--that terrible peace, that great forgetting, and awful extinction of
+hatred--the supreme deliverance rising from the fire of death.
+
+
+
+33
+
+
+Fiercely they rend in pieces the carpet woven during ages of prayer for the
+welcome of the world's best hope.
+
+The great preparations of love lie a heap of shreds, and there is nothing
+on the ruined altar to remind the mad crowd that their god was to have
+come. In a fury of passion they seem to have burnt their future to cinders,
+and with it the season of their bloom.
+
+The air is harsh with the cry, "Victory to the Brute!" The children look
+haggard and aged; they whisper to one another that time revolves but never
+advances, that we are goaded to run but have nothing to reach, that
+creation is like a blind man's groping.
+
+I said to myself, "Cease thy singing. Song is for one who is to come, the
+struggle without an end is for things that are."
+
+The road, that ever lies along like some one with ear to the ground
+listening for footsteps, to-day gleans no hint of coming guest, nothing of
+the house at its far end.
+
+My lute said, "Trample me in the dust."
+
+I looked at the dust by the roadside. There was a tiny flower among thorns.
+And I cried, "The world's hope is not dead!"
+
+The sky stooped over the horizon to whisper to the earth, and a hush of
+expectation filled the air. I saw the palm leaves clapping their hands to
+the beat of inaudible music, and the moon exchanged glances with the
+glistening silence of the lake.
+
+The road said to me, "Fear nothing!" and my lute said, "Lend me thy songs!"
+
+
+
+34
+
+TRANSLATIONS
+
+
+BAUL SONGS[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: The Bauls are a sect of religious mendicants in Bengal,
+unlettered and unconventional, whose songs are loved and sung by the
+people. The literal meaning of the word "Baul" is "the Mad."]
+
+
+
+1
+
+
+This longing to meet in the play of love, my Lover, is not only mine but
+yours.
+
+Your lips can smile, your flute make music, only through delight in my
+love; therefore you are importunate even as I.
+
+
+
+2
+
+
+I sit here on the road; do not ask me to walk further.
+
+If your love can be complete without mine let me turn back from seeking
+you.
+
+I refuse to beg a sight of you if you do not feel my need.
+
+I am blind with market dust and mid-day glare, and so wait, in hopes that
+your heart, my heart's lover, will send you to find me.
+
+
+
+3
+
+
+I am poured forth in living notes of joy and sorrow by your breath.
+
+Mornings and evenings in summer and in rains, I am fashioned to music.
+
+Should I be wholly spent in some flight of song, I shall not grieve, the
+tune is so dear to me.
+
+
+
+4
+
+
+My heart is a flute he has played on. If ever it fall into other hands let
+him fling it away.
+
+My lover's flute is dear to him, therefore if to-day alien breath have
+entered it and sounded strange notes, let him break it to pieces and strew
+the dust with them.
+
+
+
+5
+
+
+In love the aim is neither pain nor pleasure but love only.
+
+While free love binds, division destroys it, for love is what unites.
+
+Love is lit from love as fire from fire, but whence came the first flame?
+
+In your being it leaps under the rod of pain.
+
+Then, when the hidden fire flames forth, the in and the out are one and all
+barriers fall in ashes.
+
+Let the pain glow fiercely, burst from the heart and beat back darkness,
+need you be afraid?
+
+The poet says, "Who can buy love without paying its price? When you fail to
+give yourself you make the whole world miserly."
+
+
+
+6
+
+
+Eyes see only dust and earth, but feel with the heart, and know pure joy.
+
+The delights blossom on all sides in every form, but where is your heart's
+thread to make a wreath of them?
+
+My master's flute sounds through all things, drawing me out of my lodgings
+wherever they may be, and while I listen I know that every step I take is
+in my master's house.
+
+For he is the sea, he is the river that leads to the sea, and he is the
+landing-place.
+
+
+
+7
+
+
+Strange ways has my guest.
+
+He comes at times when I am unprepared, yet how can I refuse him?
+
+I watch all night with lighted lamp; he stays away; when the light goes out
+and the room is bare he comes claiming his seat, and can I keep him
+waiting?
+
+I laugh and make merry with friends, then suddenly I start up, for lo! he
+passes me by in sorrow, and I know my mirth was vain.
+
+I have often seen a smile in his eyes when my heart ached, then I knew my
+sorrow was not real.
+
+Yet I never complain when I do not understand him.
+
+
+
+8
+
+
+I am the boat, you are the sea, and also the boatman.
+
+Though you never make the shore, though you let me sink, why should I be
+foolish and afraid?
+
+Is reaching the shore a greater prize than losing myself with you?
+
+If you are only the haven, as they say, then what is the sea?
+
+Let it surge and toss me on its waves, I shall be content.
+
+I live in you whatever and however you appear. Save me or kill me as you
+wish, only never leave me in other hands.
+
+
+
+9
+
+
+Make way, O bud, make way, burst open thy heart and make way.
+
+The opening spirit has overtaken thee, canst thou remain a bud any longer?
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+
+1
+
+
+Come, Spring, reckless lover of the earth, make the forest's heart pant for
+utterance!
+
+Come in gusts of disquiet where flowers break open and jostle the new
+leaves!
+
+Burst, like a rebellion of light, through the night's vigil, through the
+lake's dark dumbness, through the dungeon under the dust, proclaiming
+freedom to the shackled seeds!
+
+Like the laughter of lightning, like the shout of a storm, break into the
+midst of the noisy town; free stifled word and unconscious effort,
+reinforce our flagging fight, and conquer death!
+
+
+
+2
+
+
+I have looked on this picture in many a month of March when the mustard is
+in bloom--this lazy line of the water and the grey of the sand beyond, the
+rough path along the river-bank carrying the comradeship of the field into
+the heart of the village.
+
+I have tried to capture in rhyme the idle whistle of the wind, the beat of
+the oar-strokes from a passing boat.
+
+I have wondered in my mind how simply it stands before me, this great
+world: with what fond and familiar ease it fills my heart, this encounter
+with the Eternal Stranger.
+
+
+
+3
+
+
+The ferry-boat plies between the two villages facing each other across the
+narrow stream.
+
+The water is neither wide nor deep--a mere break in the path that enhances
+the small adventures of daily life, like a break in the words of a song
+across which the tune gleefully streams.
+
+While the towers of wealth rise high and crash to ruin, these villages talk
+to each other across the garrulous stream, and the ferry-boat plies between
+them, age after age, from seed-time to harvest.
+
+
+
+4
+
+
+In the evening after they have brought their cattle home, they sit on the
+grass before their huts to know that you are among them unseen, to repeat
+in their songs the name which they have fondly given you.
+
+While kings' crowns shine and disappear like falling stars, around village
+huts your name rises through the still night from the simple hearts of your
+lovers whose names are unrecorded.
+
+
+
+5
+
+
+In Baby's world, the trees shake their leaves at him, murmuring verses in
+an ancient tongue that dates from before the age of meaning, and the moon
+feigns to be of his own age--the solitary baby of night.
+
+In the world of the old, flowers dutifully blush at the make-believe of
+faery legends, and broken dolls confess that they are made of clay.
+
+
+
+6
+
+
+_My world_, when I was a child, you were a little girl-neighbour, a loving
+timid stranger.
+
+Then you grew bold and talked to me across the fence, offering me toys and
+flowers and shells.
+
+Next you coaxed me away from my work, you tempted me into the land of the
+dusk or the weedy corner of some garden in mid-day loneliness.
+
+At length you told me stories about bygone times, with which the present
+ever longs to meet so as to be rescued from its prison in the moment.
+
+
+
+7
+
+
+How often, great Earth, have I felt my being yearn to flow over you,
+sharing in the happiness of each green blade that raises its signal banner
+in answer to the beckoning blue of the sky!
+
+I feel as if I had belonged to you ages before I was born. That is why, in
+the days when the autumn light shimmers on the mellowing ears of rice, I
+seem to remember a past when my mind was everywhere, and even to hear
+voices as of playfellows echoing from the remote and deeply veiled past.
+
+When, in the evening, the cattle return to their folds, raising dust from
+the meadow paths, as the moon rises higher than the smoke ascending from
+the village huts, I feel sad as for some great separation that happened in
+the first morning of existence.
+
+
+
+8
+
+
+My mind still buzzed with the cares of a busy day; I sat on without noting
+how twilight was deepening into dark. Suddenly light stirred across the
+gloom and touched me as with a finger.
+
+I lifted my head and met the gaze of the full moon widened in wonder like a
+child's. It held my eyes for long, and I felt as though a love-letter had
+been secretly dropped in at my window. And ever since my heart is breaking
+to write for answer something fragrant as Night's unseen flowers--great as
+her declaration spelt out in nameless stars.
+
+
+
+9
+
+
+The clouds thicken till the morning light seems like a bedraggled fringe to
+the rainy night.
+
+A little girl stands at her window, still as a rainbow at the gate of a
+broken-down storm.
+
+She is my neighbour, and has come upon the earth like some god's rebellious
+laughter. Her mother in anger calls her incorrigible; her father smiles and
+calls her mad.
+
+She is like a runaway waterfall leaping over boulders, like the topmost
+bamboo twig rustling in the restless wind.
+
+She stands at her window looking out into the sky.
+
+Her sister comes to say, "Mother calls you." She shakes her head.
+
+Her little brother with his toy boat comes and tries to pull her off to
+play; she snatches her hand from his. The boy persists and she gives him a
+slap on the back.
+
+The first great voice was the voice of wind and water in the beginning of
+earth's creation.
+
+That ancient cry of nature--her dumb call to unborn life--has reached this
+child's heart and leads it out alone beyond the fence of our times: so
+there she stands, possessed by eternity!
+
+
+
+10
+
+
+The kingfisher sits still on the prow of an empty boat, while in the
+shallow margin of the stream a buffalo lies tranquilly blissful, its eyes
+half closed to savour the luxury of cool mud.
+
+Undismayed by the barking of the village cur, the cow browses on the bank,
+followed by a hopping group of _saliks_ hunting moths.
+
+I sit in the tamarind grove, where the cries of dumb life congregate--the
+cattle's lowing, the sparrows' chatter, the shrill scream of a kite
+overhead, the crickets' chirp, and the splash of a fish in the water.
+
+I peep into the primeval nursery of life, where the mother Earth thrills at
+the first living clutch near her breast.
+
+
+
+11
+
+
+At the sleepy village the noon was still like a sunny midnight when my
+holidays came to their end.
+
+My little girl of four had followed me all the morning from room to room,
+watching my preparations in grave silence, till, wearied, she sat by the
+doorpost strangely quiet, murmuring to herself, "Father must not go!"
+
+This was the meal hour, when sleep daily overcame her, but her mother had
+forgotten her and the child was too unhappy to complain.
+
+At last, when I stretched out my arms to her to say farewell, she never
+moved, but sadly looking at me said, "Father, you must not go!"
+
+And it amused me to tears to think how this little child dared to fight the
+giant world of necessity with no other resource than those few words,
+"Father, you must not go!"
+
+
+
+12
+
+
+Take your holiday, my boy; there are the blue sky and the bare field, the
+barn and the ruined temple under the ancient tamarind.
+
+My holiday must be taken through yours, finding light in the dance of your
+eyes, music in your noisy shouts.
+
+To you autumn brings the true holiday freedom: to me it brings the
+impossibility of work; for lo! you burst into my room.
+
+Yes, my holiday is an endless freedom for love to disturb me.
+
+
+
+13
+
+
+In the evening my little daughter heard a call from her companions below
+the window.
+
+She timidly went down the dark stairs holding a lamp in her hand, shielding
+it behind her veil.
+
+I was sitting on my terrace in the star-lit night of March, when at a
+sudden cry I ran to see.
+
+Her lamp had gone out in the dark spiral staircase. I asked, "Child, why
+did you cry?"
+
+From below she answered in distress, "Father, I have lost myself!"
+
+When I came back to the terrace under the star-lit night of March, I looked
+at the sky, and it seemed that a child was walking there treasuring many
+lamps behind her veils.
+
+If their light went out, she would suddenly stop and a cry would sound from
+sky to sky, "Father, I have lost myself!"
+
+
+
+14
+
+
+The evening stood bewildered among street lamps, its gold tarnished by the
+city dust.
+
+A woman, gaudily decked and painted, leant over the rail of her balcony, a
+living fire waiting for its moths.
+
+Suddenly an eddy was formed in the road round a street-boy crushed under
+the wheels of a carriage, and the woman on the balcony fell to the floor
+screaming in agony, stricken with the grief of the great white-robed Mother
+who sits in the world's inner shrine.
+
+
+
+15
+
+
+I remember the scene on the barren heath--a girl sat alone on the grass
+before the gipsy camp, braiding her hair in the afternoon shade.
+
+Her little dog jumped and barked at her busy hands, as though her
+employment had no importance.
+
+In vain did she rebuke it, calling it "a pest," saying she was tired of its
+perpetual silliness.
+
+She struck it on the nose with her reproving forefinger, which only seemed
+to delight it the more.
+
+She looked menacingly grave for a few moments, to warn it of impending
+doom; and then, letting her hair fall, quickly snatched it up in her arms,
+laughed, and pressed it to her heart.
+
+
+
+16
+
+
+He is tall and lean, withered to the bone with long repeated fever, like a
+dead tree unable to draw a single drop of sap from anywhere.
+
+In despairing patience, his mother carries him like a child into the sun,
+where he sits by the roadside in the shortening shadows of each forenoon.
+
+The world passes by--a woman to fetch water, a herd-boy with cattle to
+pasture, a laden cart to the distant market--and the mother hopes that some
+least stir of life may touch the awful torpor of her dying son.
+
+
+
+17
+
+
+If the ragged villager, trudging home from the market, could suddenly be
+lifted to the crest of a distant age, men would stop in their work and
+shout and run to him in delight.
+
+For they would no longer whittle down the man into the peasant, but find
+him full of the mystery and spirit of his age.
+
+Even his poverty and pain would grow great, released from the shallow
+insult of the present, and the paltry things in his basket would acquire
+pathetic dignity.
+
+
+
+18
+
+
+With the morning he came out to walk a road shaded by a file of deodars,
+that coiled the hill round like importunate love.
+
+He held the first letter from his newly wedded wife in their village home,
+begging him to come to her, and come soon.
+
+The touch of an absent hand haunted him as he walked, and the air seemed to
+take up the cry of the letter: "Love, my love, my sky is brimming with
+tears!"
+
+He asked himself in wonder, "How do I deserve this?"
+
+The sun suddenly appeared over the rim of the blue hills, and four girls
+from a foreign shore came with swift strides, talking loud and followed by
+a barking dog.
+
+The two elder turned away to conceal their amusement at something strange
+in his insignificance, and the younger ones pushed each other, laughed
+aloud, and ran off in exuberant mirth.
+
+He stopped and his head sank. Then he suddenly felt his letter, opened and
+read it again.
+
+
+
+19
+
+
+The day came for the image from the temple to be drawn round the holy town
+in its chariot.
+
+The Queen said to the King, "Let us go and attend the festival."
+
+Only one man out of the whole household did not join in the pilgrimage. His
+work was to collect stalks of spear-grass to make brooms for the King's
+house.
+
+The chief of the servants said in pity to him, "You may come with us."
+
+He bowed his head, saying, "It cannot be."
+
+
+The man dwelt by the road along which the King's followers had to pass. And
+when the Minister's elephant reached this spot, he called to him and said,
+"Come with us and see the God ride in his chariot!"
+
+"I dare not seek God after the King's fashion," said the man.
+
+"How should you ever have such luck again as to see the God in his
+chariot?" asked the Minister.
+
+"When God himself comes to my door," answered the man.
+
+The Minister laughed loud and said, "Fool! 'When God comes to your door!'
+yet a King must travel to see him!"
+
+"Who except God visits the poor?" said the man.
+
+
+
+20
+
+
+Days were drawing out as the winter ended, and, in the sun, my dog played
+in his wild way with the pet deer.
+
+The crowd going to the market gathered by the fence, and laughed to see the
+love of these playmates struggle with languages so dissimilar.
+
+
+The spring was in the air, and the young leaves fluttered like flames. A
+gleam danced in the deer's dark eyes when she started, bent her neck at the
+movement of her own shadow, or raised her ears to listen to some whisper in
+the wind.
+
+The message comes floating with the errant breeze, with the rustle and
+glimmer abroad in the April sky. It sings of the first ache of youth in the
+world, when the first flower broke from the bud, and love went forth
+seeking that which it knew not, leaving all it had known.
+
+
+And one afternoon, when among the _amlak_ trees the shadow grew grave and
+sweet with the furtive caress of light, the deer set off to run like a
+meteor in love with death.
+
+It grew dark, and lamps were lighted in the house; the stars came out and
+night was upon the fields, but the deer never came back.
+
+My dog ran up to me whining, questioning me with his piteous eyes which
+seemed to say, "I do not understand!"
+
+But who does ever understand?
+
+
+
+21
+
+
+Our Lane is tortuous, as if, ages ago, she started in quest of her goal,
+vacillated right and left, and remained bewildered for ever.
+
+Above in the air, between her buildings, hangs like a ribbon a strip torn
+out of space: she calls it her sister of the blue town.
+
+She sees the sun only for a few moments at mid-day, and asks herself in
+wise doubt, "Is it real?"
+
+In June rain sometimes shades her band of daylight as with pencil
+hatchings. The path grows slippery with mud, and umbrellas collide. Sudden
+jets of water from spouts overhead splash on her startled pavement. In her
+dismay, she takes it for the jest of an unmannerly scheme of creation.
+
+The spring breeze, gone astray in her coil of contortions, stumbles like a
+drunken vagabond against angle and corner, filling the dusty air with
+scraps of paper and rag. "What fury of foolishness! Are the Gods gone mad?"
+she exclaims in indignation.
+
+But the daily refuse from the houses on both sides--scales of fish mixed
+with ashes, vegetable peelings, rotten fruit, and dead rats--never rouse
+her to question, "Why should these things be?"
+
+She accepts every stone of her paving. But from between their chinks
+sometimes a blade of grass peeps up. That baffles her. How can solid facts
+permit such intrusion?
+
+On a morning when at the touch of autumn light her houses wake up into
+beauty from their foul dreams, she whispers to herself, "There is a
+limitless wonder somewhere beyond these buildings."
+
+But the hours pass on; the households are astir; the maid strolls back from
+the market, swinging her right arm and with the left clasping the basket of
+provisions to her side; the air grows thick with the smell and smoke of
+kitchens. It again becomes clear to our Lane that the real and normal
+consist solely of herself, her houses, and their muck-heaps.
+
+
+
+22
+
+
+The house, lingering on after its wealth has vanished, stands by the
+wayside like a madman with a patched rag over his back.
+
+Day after day scars it with spiteful scratches, and rainy months leave
+their fantastic signatures on its bared bricks.
+
+In a deserted upper room one of a pair of doors has fallen from rusty
+hinges; and the other, widowed, bangs day and night to the fitful gusts.
+
+One night the sound of women wailing came from that house. They mourned the
+death of the last son of the family, a boy of eighteen, who earned his
+living by playing the part of the heroine in a travelling theatre.
+
+A few days more and the house became silent, and all the doors were locked.
+
+Only on the north side in the upper room that desolate door would neither
+drop off to its rest nor be shut, but swung to and fro in the wind like a
+self-torturing soul.
+
+
+After a time children's voices echo once more through that house. Over the
+balcony-rail women's clothes are hung in the sun, a bird whistles from a
+covered cage, and a boy plays with his kite on the terrace.
+
+A tenant has come to occupy a few rooms. He earns little and has many
+children. The tired mother beats them and they roll on the floor and
+shriek.
+
+
+A maid-servant of forty drudges through the day, quarrels with her
+mistress, threatens to, but never leaves.
+
+Every day some small repairs are done. Paper is pasted in place of missing
+panes; gaps in the railings are made good with split bamboo; an empty box
+keeps the boltless gate shut; old stains vaguely show through new whitewash
+on the walls.
+
+The magnificence of wealth had found a fitting memorial in gaunt
+desolation; but, lacking sufficient means, they try to hide this with
+dubious devices, and its dignity is outraged.
+
+They have overlooked the deserted room on the north side. And its forlorn
+door still bangs in the wind, like Despair beating her breast.
+
+
+
+23
+
+
+In the depths of the forest the ascetic practised penance with fast-closed
+eyes; he intended to deserve Paradise.
+
+But the girl who gathered twigs brought him fruits in her skirt, and water
+from the stream in cups made of leaves.
+
+The days went on, and his penance grew harsher till the fruits remained
+untasted, the water untouched: and the girl who gathered twigs was sad.
+
+
+The Lord of Paradise heard that a man had dared to aspire to be as the
+Gods. Time after time he had fought the Titans, who were his peers, and
+kept them out of his kingdom; yet he feared a man whose power was that of
+suffering.
+
+But he knew the ways of mortals, and he planned a temptation to decoy this
+creature of dust away from his adventure.
+
+
+A breath from Paradise kissed the limbs of the girl who gathered twigs, and
+her youth ached with a sudden rapture of beauty, and her thoughts hummed
+like the bees of a rifled hive.
+
+The time came when the ascetic should leave the forest for a mountain cave,
+to complete the rigour of his penance.
+
+When he opened his eyes in order to start on this journey, the girl
+appeared to him like a verse familiar, yet forgotten, and which an added
+melody made strange. The ascetic rose from his seat and told her that it
+was time he left the forest.
+
+"But why rob me of my chance to serve you?" she asked with tears in her
+eyes.
+
+He sat down again, thought for long, and remained on where he was.
+
+
+That night remorse kept the girl awake. She began to dread her power and
+hate her triumph, yet her mind tossed on the waves of turbulent delight.
+
+In the morning she came and saluted the ascetic and asked his blessing,
+saying she must leave him.
+
+He gazed on her face in silence, then said, "Go, and may your wish be
+fulfilled."
+
+For years he sat alone till his penance was complete.
+
+The Lord of the Immortals came down to tell him that he had won Paradise.
+
+"I no longer need it," said he.
+
+The God asked him what greater reward he desired.
+
+"I want the girl who gathers twigs."
+
+
+
+24
+
+
+They said that Kabir, the weaver, was favoured of God, and the crowd
+flocked round him for medicine and miracles. But he was troubled; his low
+birth had hitherto endowed him with a most precious obscurity to sweeten
+with songs and with the presence of his God. He prayed that it might be
+restored.
+
+Envious of the repute of this outcast, the priests leagued themselves with
+a harlot to disgrace him. Kabir came to the market to sell cloths from his
+loom; when the woman grasped his hand, blaming him for being faithless, and
+followed him to his house, saying she would not be forsaken, Kabir said to
+himself, "God answers prayers in his own way."
+
+Soon the woman felt a shiver of fear and fell on her knees and cried, "Save
+me from my sin!" To which he said, "Open your life to God's light!"
+
+Kabir worked at his loom and sang, and his songs washed the stains from
+that woman's heart, and by way of return found a home in her sweet voice.
+
+One day the King, in a fit of caprice, sent a message to Kabir to come and
+sing before him. The weaver shook his head: but the messenger dared not
+leave his door till his master's errand was fulfilled.
+
+The King and his courtiers started at the sight of Kabir when he entered
+the hall. For he was not alone, the woman followed him. Some smiled, some
+frowned, and the King's face darkened at the beggar's pride and
+shamelessness.
+
+Kabir came back to his house disgraced, the woman fell at his feet crying,
+"Why accept such dishonour for my sake, master? Suffer me to go back to my
+infamy!"
+
+Kabir said, "I dare not turn my God away when he comes branded with
+insult."
+
+
+
+25
+
+SOMAKA AND RITVIK
+
+
+SOMAKA AND RITVIK
+
+_The shade of_ KING SOMAKA, _faring to Heaven in a chariot, passes other
+shades by the roadside, among them that of_ RITVIK, _his former
+high-priest_.
+
+
+A VOICE
+
+Where would you go, King?
+
+
+SOMAKA
+
+Whose voice is that? This turbid air is like suffocation to the eyes; I
+cannot see.
+
+
+THE VOICE
+
+Come down, King! Come down from that chariot bound for Heaven.
+
+
+SOMAKA
+
+Who are you?
+
+
+THE VOICE
+
+I am Ritvik, who in my earthly life was your preceptor and the chief priest
+of your house.
+
+
+SOMAKA
+
+Master, all the tears of the world seem to have become vapour to create
+this realm of vagueness. What make you here?
+
+
+SHADES
+
+This hell lies hard by the road to Heaven, whence lights glimmer dimly,
+only to prove unapproachable. Day and night we listen to the heavenly
+chariot rumbling by with travellers for that region of bliss; it drives
+sleep from our eyes and forces them to watch in fruitless jealousy. Far
+below us earth's old forests rustle and her seas chant the primal hymn of
+creation: they sound like the wail of a memory that wanders void space in
+vain.
+
+
+RITVIK
+
+Come down, King!
+
+
+SHADES
+
+Stop a few moments among us. The earth's tears still cling about you, like
+dew on freshly culled flowers. You have brought with you the mingled odours
+of meadow and forest; reminiscence of children, women, and comrades;
+something too of the ineffable music of the seasons.
+
+
+SOMAKA
+
+Master, why are you doomed to live in this muffled stagnant world?
+
+
+RITVIK
+
+I offered up your son in the sacrificial fire: _that_ sin has lodged my
+soul in this obscurity.
+
+
+SHADES
+
+King, tell us the story, we implore you; the recital of crime can still
+bring life's fire into our torpor.
+
+
+SOMAKA
+
+I was named Somaka, the King of Videha. After sacrificing at innumerable
+shrines weary year on year, a son was born to my house in my old age, love
+for whom, like a sudden untimely flood, swept consideration for everything
+else from my life. He hid me completely, as a lotus hides its stem. The
+neglected duties of a king piled up in shame before my throne. One day, in
+my audience hall, I heard my child cry from his mother's room, and
+instantly rushed away, vacating my throne.
+
+
+RITVIK
+
+Just then, it chanced, I entered the hall to give him my daily benediction;
+in blind haste he brushed me aside and enkindled my anger. When later he
+came back, shame-faced, I asked him: "King, what desperate alarm could draw
+you at the busiest hour of the day to the women's apartments, so as to
+desert your dignity and duty--ambassadors come from friendly courts, the
+aggrieved who ask for justice, your ministers waiting to discuss matters of
+grave import? and even lead you to slight a Brahmin's blessing?"
+
+
+SOMAKA
+
+At first my heart flamed with anger; the next moment I trampled it down
+like the raised head of a snake and meekly replied: "Having only one child,
+I have lost my peace of mind. Forgive me this once, and I promise that in
+future the father's infatuation shall never usurp the King."
+
+
+RITVIK
+
+But my heart was bitter with resentment, and I said, "If you must be
+delivered from the curse of having only one child, I can show you the way.
+But so hard is it that I feel certain you will fail to follow it." This
+galled the King's pride and he stood up and exclaimed, "I swear, by all
+that is sacred, as a Kshatriya and a King, I will not shrink, but perform
+whatever you may ask, however hard." "Then listen," said I. "Light a
+sacrificial fire, offer up your son: the smoke that rises will bring you
+progeny, as the clouds bring rain." The King bowed his head upon his breast
+and remained silent: the courtiers shouted their horror, the Brahmins
+clapped their hands over their ears, crying, "Sin it is both to utter and
+listen to such words." After some moments of bewildered dismay the King
+calmly said, "I will abide by my promise." The day came, the fire was lit,
+the town was emptied of its people, the child was called for; but the
+attendants refused to obey, the soldiers rebelliously went off duty,
+throwing down their arms. Then I, who in my wisdom had soared far above all
+weakness of heart and to whom emotions were illusory, went myself to the
+apartment where, with their arms, women fenced the child like a flower
+surrounded by the menacing branches of a tree. He saw me and stretched out
+eager hands and struggled to come to me, for he longed to be free from the
+love that imprisoned him. Crying, "I am come to give you true deliverance,"
+I snatched him by force from his fainting mother and his nurses wailing in
+despair. With quivering tongues the fire licked the sky and the King stood
+beside it, still and silent, like a tree struck dead by lightning.
+Fascinated by the godlike splendour of the blaze, the child babbled in glee
+and danced in my arms, impatient to seek an unknown nurse in the free glory
+of those flames.
+
+
+SOMAKA
+
+Stop, no more, I pray!
+
+
+SHADES
+
+Ritvik, your presence is a disgrace to hell itself!
+
+
+THE CHARIOTEER
+
+This is no place for you, King! nor have you deserved to be forced to
+listen to this recital of a deed which makes hell shudder in pity.
+
+
+SOMAKA
+
+Drive off in your chariot!--Brahmin, my place is by you in this hell. The
+Gods may forget my sin, but can I forget the last look of agonised surprise
+on my child's face when, for one terrible moment, he realised that his own
+father had betrayed his trust?
+
+
+_Enter_ DHARMA, _the Judge of Departed Spirits_
+
+
+DHARMA
+
+King, Heaven waits for you.
+
+
+SOMAKA
+
+No, not for me. I killed my own child.
+
+
+DHARMA
+
+Your sin has been swept away in the fury of pain it caused you.
+
+
+RITVIK
+
+No, King, you must never go to Heaven alone, and thus create a second hell
+for me, to burn both with fire and with hatred of you! Stay here!
+
+
+SOMAKA
+
+I will stay.
+
+
+SHADES
+
+And crown the despair and inglorious suffering of hell with the triumph of
+a soul!
+
+
+
+26
+
+
+The man had no useful work, only vagaries of various kinds.
+
+Therefore it surprised him to find himself in Paradise after a life spent
+perfecting trifles.
+
+Now the guide had taken him by mistake to the wrong Paradise--one meant
+only for good, busy souls.
+
+
+In this Paradise, our man saunters along the road only to obstruct the rush
+of business.
+
+He stands aside from the path and is warned that he tramples on sown seed.
+Pushed, he starts up: hustled, he moves on.
+
+A very busy girl comes to fetch water from the well. Her feet run on the
+pavement like rapid fingers over harp-strings. Hastily she ties a negligent
+knot with her hair, and loose locks on her forehead pry into the dark of
+her eyes.
+
+The man says to her, "Would you lend me your pitcher?"
+
+"My pitcher?" she asks, "to draw water?"
+
+"No, to paint patterns on."
+
+"I have no time to waste," the girl retorts in contempt.
+
+
+Now a busy soul has no chance against one who is supremely idle.
+
+Every day she meets him at the well, and every day he repeats the same
+request, till at last she yields.
+
+Our man paints the pitcher with curious colours in a mysterious maze of
+lines.
+
+The girl takes it up, turns it round and asks, "What does it mean?"
+
+"It has no meaning," he answers.
+
+
+The girl carries the pitcher home. She holds it up in different lights and
+tries to con its mystery.
+
+At night she leaves her bed, lights a lamp, and gazes at it from all points
+of view.
+
+This is the first time she has met with something without meaning.
+
+
+On the next day the man is again near the well.
+
+The girl asks, "What do you want?"
+
+"To do more work for you."
+
+"What work?" she enquires.
+
+"Allow me to weave coloured strands into a ribbon to bind your hair."
+
+"Is there any need?" she asks.
+
+"None whatever," he allows.
+
+The ribbon is made, and thence-forward she spends a great deal of time over
+her hair.
+
+The even stretch of well-employed time in that Paradise begins to show
+irregular rents.
+
+The elders are troubled; they meet in council.
+
+The guide confesses his blunder, saying that he has brought the wrong man
+to the wrong place.
+
+The wrong man is called. His turban, flaming with colour, shows plainly how
+great that blunder has been.
+
+The chief of the elders says, "You must go back to the earth."
+
+The man heaves a sigh of relief: "I am ready."
+
+The girl with the ribbon round her hair chimes in: "I also!"
+
+For the first time the chief of the elders is faced with a situation which
+has no sense in it.
+
+
+
+27
+
+
+It is said that in the forest, near the meeting of river and lake, certain
+fairies live in disguise who are only recognised as fairies after they have
+flown away.
+
+A Prince went to this forest, and when he came where river met lake he saw
+a village girl sitting on the bank ruffling the water to make the lilies
+dance.
+
+He asked her in a whisper, "Tell me, what fairy art thou?"
+
+The girl laughed at the question and the hillsides echoed her mirth.
+
+The Prince thought she was the laughing fairy of the waterfall.
+
+
+News reached the King that the Prince had married a fairy: he sent horses
+and men and brought them to his house.
+
+The Queen saw the bride and turned her face away in disgust, the Prince's
+sister flushed red with annoyance, and the maids asked if that was how
+fairies dressed.
+
+The Prince whispered, "Hush! my fairy has come to our house in disguise."
+
+
+On the day of the yearly festival the Queen said to her son, "Ask your
+bride not to shame us before our kinsfolk who are coming to see the fairy."
+
+And the Prince said to his bride, "For my love's sake show thy true self to
+my people."
+
+Long she sat silent, then nodded her promise while tears ran down her
+cheeks.
+
+
+The full moon shone, the Prince, dressed in a wedding robe, entered his
+bride's room.
+
+No one was there, nothing but a streak of moonlight from the window aslant
+the bed.
+
+The kinsfolk crowded in with the King and the Queen, the Prince's sister
+stood by the door.
+
+All asked, "Where is the fairy bride?"
+
+The Prince answered, "She has vanished for ever to make herself known to
+you."
+
+
+
+28
+
+KARNA AND KUNTI
+
+
+KARNA AND KUNTI
+
+_The Pandava Queen Kunti before marriage had a son, Karna, who, in manhood,
+became the commander of the Kaurava host. To hide her shame she abandoned
+him at birth, and a charioteer, Adhiratha, brought him up as his son._
+
+
+KARNA
+
+I am Karna, the son of the charioteer, Adhiratha, and I sit here by the
+bank of holy Ganges to worship the setting sun. Tell me who you are.
+
+
+KUNTI
+
+I am the woman who first made you acquainted with that light you are
+worshipping.
+
+
+KARNA
+
+I do not understand: but your eyes melt my heart as the kiss of the morning
+sun melts the snow on a mountain-top, and your voice rouses a blind sadness
+within me of which the cause may well lie beyond the reach of my earliest
+memory. Tell me, strange woman, what mystery binds my birth to you?
+
+
+KUNTI
+
+Patience, my son. I will answer when the lids of darkness come down over
+the prying eyes of day. In the meanwhile, know that I am Kunti.
+
+
+KARNA
+
+Kunti! The mother of Arjuna?
+
+
+KUNTI
+
+Yes, indeed, the mother of Arjuna, your antagonist. But do not, therefore,
+hate me. I still remember the day of the trial of arms in Hastina when you,
+an unknown boy, boldly stepped into the arena, like the first ray of dawn
+among the stars of night. Ah! who was that unhappy woman whose eyes kissed
+your bare, slim body through tears that blessed you, where she sat among
+the women of the royal household behind the arras? Why, the mother of
+Arjuna! Then the Brahmin, master of arms, stepped forth and said, "No youth
+of mean birth may challenge Arjuna to a trial of strength." You stood
+speechless, like a thunder-cloud at sunset flashing with an agony of
+suppressed light. But who was the woman whose heart caught fire from your
+shame and anger, and flared up in silence? The mother of Arjuna! Praised be
+Duryodhana, who perceived your worth, and then and there crowned you King
+of Anga, thus winning the Kauravas a champion. Overwhelmed at this good
+fortune, Adhiratha, the charioteer, broke through the crowd; you instantly
+rushed to him and laid your crown at his feet amid the jeering laughter of
+the Pandavas and their friends. But there was one woman of the Pandava
+house whose heart glowed with joy at the heroic pride of such
+humility;--even the mother of Arjuna!
+
+
+KARNA
+
+But what brings you here alone, Mother of kings?
+
+
+KUNTI
+
+I have a boon to crave.
+
+
+KARNA
+
+Command me, and whatever manhood and my honour as a Kshatriya permit shall
+be offered at your feet.
+
+
+KUNTI
+
+I have come to take you.
+
+
+KARNA
+
+Where?
+
+
+KUNTI
+
+To my breast thirsting for your love, my son.
+
+
+KARNA
+
+Fortunate mother of five brave kings, where can you find place for me, a
+small chieftain of lowly descent?
+
+
+KUNTI
+
+Your place is before all my other sons.
+
+
+KARNA
+
+But what right have I to take it?
+
+
+KUNTI
+
+Your own God-given right to your mother's love.
+
+
+KARNA
+
+The gloom of evening spreads over the earth, silence rests on the water,
+and your voice leads me back to some primal world of infancy lost in twilit
+consciousness. However, whether this be dream, or fragment of forgotten
+reality, come near and place your right hand on my forehead. Rumour runs
+that I was deserted by my mother. Many a night she has come to me in my
+slumber, but when I cried: "Open your veil, show me your face!" her figure
+always vanished. Has this same dream come this evening while I wake? See,
+yonder the lamps are lighted in your son's tents across the river; and on
+this side behold the tent-domes of my Kauravas, like the suspended waves of
+a spell-arrested storm at sea. Before the din of tomorrow's battle, in the
+awful hush of this field where it must be fought, why should the voice of
+the mother of my opponent, Arjuna, bring me a message of forgotten
+motherhood? and why should my name take such music from her tongue as to
+draw my heart out to him and his brothers?
+
+
+KUNTI
+
+Then delay not, my son, come with me!
+
+
+KARNA
+
+Yes, I will come and never ask question, never doubt. My soul responds to
+your call; and the struggle for victory and fame and the rage of hatred
+have suddenly become untrue to me, as the delirious dream of a night in the
+serenity of the dawn. Tell me whither you mean to lead?
+
+
+KUNTI
+
+To the other bank of the river, where those lamps burn across the ghastly
+pallor of the sands.
+
+
+KARNA
+
+Am I there to find my lost mother for ever?
+
+
+KUNTI
+
+O my son!
+
+
+KARNA
+
+Then why did you banish me--a castaway uprooted from my ancestral soil,
+adrift in a homeless current of indignity? Why set a bottomless chasm
+between Arjuna and myself, turning the natural attachment of kinship to the
+dread attraction of hate? You remain speechless. Your shame permeates the
+vast darkness and sends invisible shivers through my limbs. Leave my
+question unanswered! Never explain to me what made you rob your son of his
+mother's love! Only tell me why you have come to-day to call me back to the
+ruins of a heaven wrecked by your own hands?
+
+
+KUNTI
+
+I am dogged by a curse more deadly than your reproaches: for, though
+surrounded by five sons, my heart shrivels like that of a woman deprived of
+her children. Through the great rent that yawned for my deserted
+first-born, all my life's pleasures have run to waste. On that accursed day
+when I belied my motherhood you could not utter a word; to-day your
+recreant mother implores you for generous words. Let your forgiveness burn
+her heart like fire and consume its sin.
+
+
+KARNA
+
+Mother, accept my tears!
+
+
+KUNTI
+
+I did not come with the hope of winning you back to my arms, but with that
+of restoring your rights to you. Come and receive, as a king's son, your
+due among your brothers.
+
+
+KARNA
+
+I am more truly the son of a charioteer, and do not covet the glory of
+greater parentage.
+
+
+KUNTI
+
+Be that as it may, come and win back the kingdom, which is yours by right!
+
+
+KARNA
+
+Must you, who once refused me a mother's love, tempt me with a kingdom? The
+quick bond of kindred which you severed at its root is dead, and can never
+grow again. Shame were mine should I hasten to call the mother of kings
+mother, and abandon _my_ mother in the charioteer's house!
+
+
+KUNTI
+
+You are great, my son! How God's punishment invisibly grows from a tiny
+seed to a giant life! The helpless babe disowned by his mother comes back a
+man through the dark maze of events to smite his brothers!
+
+
+KARNA
+
+Mother, have no fear! I know for certain that victory awaits the Pandavas.
+Peaceful and still though this night be, my heart is full of the music of a
+hopeless venture and baffled end. Ask me not to leave those who are doomed
+to defeat. Let the Pandavas win the throne, since they must: I remain with
+the desperate and forlorn. On the night of my birth you left me naked and
+unnamed to disgrace: leave me once again without pity to the calm
+expectation of defeat and death!
+
+
+
+29
+
+
+When like a flaming scimitar the hill stream has been sheathed in gloom by
+the evening, suddenly a flock of birds passes overhead, their loud-laughing
+wings hurling their flight like an arrow among stars.
+
+It startles a passion for speed in the heart of all motionless things; the
+hills seem to feel in their bosom the anguish of storm-clouds, and trees
+long to break their rooted shackles.
+
+
+For me the flight of these birds has rent a veil of stillness, and reveals
+an immense flutter in this deep silence.
+
+I see these hills and forests fly across time to the unknown, and darkness
+thrill into fire as the stars wing by.
+
+I feel in my own being the rush of the sea-crossing bird, cleaving a way
+beyond the limits of life and death, while the migrant world cries with a
+myriad voices, "Not here, but somewhere else, in the bosom of the Faraway."
+
+
+
+30
+
+
+The crowd listens in wonder to Kashi, the young singer, whose voice, like a
+sword in feats of skill, dances amidst hopeless tangles, cuts them to
+pieces, and exults.
+
+
+Among the hearers sits old Rajah Pratap in weary endurance. For his own
+life had been nourished and encircled by Barajlal's songs, like a happy
+land which a river laces with beauty. His rainy evenings and the still
+hours of autumn days spoke to his heart through Barajlal's voice, and his
+festive nights trimmed their lamps and tinkled their bells to those songs.
+
+
+When Kashi stopped for rest, Pratap smilingly winked at Barajlal and spoke
+to him in a whisper, "Master, now let us hear music and not this
+new-fangled singing, which mimics frisky kittens hunting paralysed mice."
+
+
+The old singer with his spotlessly white turban made a deep bow to the
+assembly and took his seat. His thin fingers struck the strings of his
+instrument, his eyes closed, and in timid hesitation his song began. The
+hall was large, his voice feeble, and Pratap shouted "Bravo!" with
+ostentation, but whispered in his ear, "Just a little louder, friend!"
+
+
+The crowd was restless; some yawned, some dozed, some complained of the
+heat. The air of the hall hummed with many-toned inattention, and the song,
+like a frail boat, tossed upon it in vain till it sank under the hubbub.
+
+
+Suddenly the old man, stricken at heart, forgot a passage, and his voice
+groped in agony, like a blind man at a fair for his lost leader. He tried
+to fill the gap with any strain that came. But the gap still yawned: and
+the tortured notes refused to serve the need, suddenly changed their tune,
+and broke into a sob. The master laid his head on his instrument, and in
+place of his forgotten music, there broke from him the first cry of life
+that a child brings into the world.
+
+
+Pratap touched him gently on his shoulder, and said, "Come away, our
+meeting is elsewhere. I know, my friend, that truth is widowed without
+love, and beauty dwells not with the many, nor in the moment."
+
+
+
+31
+
+
+In the youth of the world, Himalaya, you sprang from the rent breast of the
+earth, and hurled your burning challenges to the sun, hill after hill. Then
+came the mellow time when you said to yourself, "No more, no further!" and
+your fiery heart, that raged for the freedom of clouds, found its limits,
+and stood still to salute the limitless. After this check on your passion,
+beauty was free to play upon your breast, and trust surrounded you with the
+joy of flowers and birds.
+
+
+You sit in your solitude like a great reader, on whose lap lies open some
+ancient book with its countless pages of stone. What story is written
+there, I wonder?--is it the eternal wedding of the divine ascetic, Shiva,
+with Bhavani, the divine love?--the drama of the Terrible wooing the power
+of the Frail?
+
+
+
+32
+
+
+I feel that my heart will leave its own colour in all your scenes, O Earth,
+when I bid you farewell. Some notes of mine will be added to your seasons'
+melody, and my thoughts will breathe unrecognised through the cycle of
+shadows and sunshine.
+
+In far-distant days summer will come to the lovers' garden, but they will
+not know that their flowers have borrowed an added beauty from my songs,
+nor that their love for this world has been deepened by mine.
+
+
+
+33
+
+
+My eyes feel the deep peace of this sky, and there stirs through me what a
+tree feels when it holds out its leaves like cups to be filled with
+sunshine.
+
+A thought rises in my mind, like the warm breath from grass in the sun; it
+mingles with the gurgle of lapping water and the sigh of weary wind in
+village lanes,--the thought that I have lived along with the whole life of
+this world and have given to it my own love and sorrows.
+
+
+
+34
+
+
+I ask no reward for the songs I sang you. I shall be content if they live
+through the night, until Dawn, like a shepherd-maiden, calls away the
+stars, in alarm at the sun.
+
+But there were moments when you sang your songs to me, and as my pride
+knows, my Poet, you will ever remember that I listened and lost my heart.
+
+
+
+35
+
+
+In the morning, when the dew glistened upon the grass, you came and gave a
+push to my swing; but, sweeping from smiles to tears, I did not know you.
+
+
+Then came April's noon of gorgeous light, and I think you beckoned me to
+follow you.
+
+But when I sought your face, there passed between us the procession of
+flowers, and men and women flinging their songs to the south wind.
+
+
+Daily I passed you unheeded on the road.
+
+But on some days full of the faint smell of oleanders, when the wind was
+wilful among complaining palm leaves, I would stand before you wondering if
+you ever had been a stranger to me.
+
+
+
+36
+
+
+The day grew dim. The early evening star faltered near the edge of a grey
+lonely sky.
+
+I looked back and felt that the road lying behind me was infinitely
+removed; traced through my life, it had only served for a single journey
+and was never to be re-travelled.
+
+The long story of my coming hither lies there dumb, in one meandering line
+of dust stretching from the morning hilltop to the brink of bottomless
+night.
+
+I sit alone, and wonder if this road is like an instrument waiting to give
+up the day's lost voices in music when touched by divine fingers at
+nightfall.
+
+
+
+37
+
+
+Give me the supreme courage of love, this is my prayer--the courage to
+speak, to do, to suffer at thy will, to leave all things or be left alone.
+Strengthen me on errands of danger, honour me with pain, and help me climb
+to that difficult mood which sacrifices daily to thee.
+
+Give me the supreme confidence of love, this is my prayer--the confidence
+that belongs to life in death, to victory in defeat, to the power hidden in
+frailest beauty, to that dignity in pain which accepts hurt but disdains to
+return it.
+
+
+
+38
+
+TRANSLATIONS
+
+
+FROM HINDI SONGS OF JNANADAS
+
+
+
+1
+
+
+Where were your songs, my bird, when you spent your nights in the nest?
+
+Was not all your pleasure stored therein?
+
+What makes you lose your heart to the sky--the sky that is boundless?
+
+
+_Answer_
+
+While I rested within bounds I was content. But when I soared into vastness
+I found I could sing.
+
+
+
+2
+
+
+Messenger, morning brought you, habited in gold.
+
+After sunset your song wore a tune of ascetic grey, and then came night.
+
+Your message was written in bright letters across black.
+
+Why is such splendour about you to lure the heart of one who is nothing?
+
+
+_Answer_
+
+Great is the festival hall where you are to be the only guest.
+
+Therefore the letter to you is written from sky to sky, and I, the proud
+servant, bring the invitation with all ceremony.
+
+
+
+3
+
+
+I had travelled all day and was tired, then I bowed my head towards thy
+kingly court still far away.
+
+The night deepened, a longing burned in my heart; whatever the words I
+sang, pain cried through them, for even my songs thirsted. O my Lover, my
+Beloved, my best in all the world!
+
+
+When time seemed lost in darkness thy hand dropped its sceptre to take up
+the lute and strike the uttermost chords; and my heart sang out, O my
+Lover, my Beloved, my best in all the world!
+
+Ah, who is this whose arms enfold me?
+
+
+Whatever I have to leave let me leave, and whatever I have to bear let me
+bear. Only let me walk with thee, O my Lover, my Beloved, my best in all
+the world!
+
+
+Descend at whiles from thine audience hall, come down amid joys and
+sorrows; hide in all forms and delights, in love and in my heart; there
+sing thy songs, O my Lover, my Beloved, my best in all the world!
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
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