the precious days and spend them in good works and prayer. But that is not my nature and my only regret is that I cannot take in the whole of the beautiful days and nights that are passing through my life with all their colour, their light and shade, their silent pageant filling the skies, their peace and beauty pervading all space between earth and heaven.
What a grand festival, what a vast theatre of festivity! And we cannot even fully respond to it, so far away do we live from the world! The light of the stars travels millions of miles to reach the earth, but it cannot reach our hearts—so many millions of miles further are we!
Ah that heavenly sunset which I saw on the Red Sea on my way to England, where is it now? But what splendid good fortune it was for me to have seen it. The vision, which of all poets in the world I alone saw, did not come in vain, for its colours have burnt themselves into my life. Each such day is as so much hoarded wealth.
Such are some of the days of my childhood at the river-side garden, some of my nights on the roof terrace, some rainy days on the south and west verandahs, some evenings of my youth at the Chandernagore villa, a sunset and a moonrise seen from the Senchal peak at Darjeeling; these and other scraps of time I have kept filed away within me. When in my early life I used to be on the roof terrace on moonlit nights, the moonlight would brim over like foam from a glass of wine, and intoxicate me.
The world into which I have tumbled is peopled with strange beings. They are always busy erecting walls and rules round themselves and how careful are they with their curtains lest they should see! It is a wonder to me they have not made drab covers for flowering plants and put up a canopy to ward off the moon. If the next life is determined by the desires of this one, then I should be reborn from this enshrouded planet into some free and open realm of joy.
Only those who cannot steep themselves in beauty to the full, despise it as an object of the senses. But they who have tasted of its inexpressibility know how far it is beyond the highest powers of mere eye or ear,—nay even the heart is powerless to attain the end of its yearning.
I masquerade through life as a civilised creature when, in passing and repassing the streets of the town, I converse with the most polished of civilised humanity in the most civilised manner. But at heart I am a barbarian and a savage. Is there no state of anarchy for me where mad men hold joyful revelry?
But what am I doing? I am raving like the hero of a melodrama who rants, in a long aside, against the conventions of society to show his superiority to the rest of mankind! I really ought to he ashamed to say this kind of thing. The bit of truth in it has long ago been drowned in verbiage. People in this world talk a deal too much, and I am the worst offender. This has just struck me after all this while.
P.S. I have left out the very thing I started to tell of. Don't be afraid, it wont take four more sheets. It is this, that on the evening of the first day of Asarh it came on to rain very heavily, in great, lance-like showers. That is all.
Translated by
Surendranath Tagore
KRISHNAKANTA'S WILL
By Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
(All rights reserved)
CHAPTER XXII.
THE rumour was afloat that Gobindalal had given seven thousand rupees' worth of ornaments to Rohini. This had reached her ears, and she wondered who had spread this falsehood. Could it be Bhramar? She at once jumped to the conclusion it was she. Who but this
