LETTERS FROM ABROAD
as they disappear. But while I play, the whole creation is amused, for are not flowers and leaves never-ending experiments in metre. Is not my God an eternal waster of time? He flings stars and planets in the whirlwind of changes, he floats paper-boats of ages, filled with his fancies, on the rushing stream of appearance, When I tease him and beg him to allow me to remain his little follower and accept a few trifles of mine as the cargo of his play-boat, he smiles and I trot behind him catching the hem of his robe.
But where am I among the crowd, pushed from behind, pressed from all sides? And what is this noise about me? If it is a song, then my own sitar can catch the tune and I join in the chorus, for I am a singer. But if it is a shout, then my voice is wrecked and I am lost in bewilderment. I have been trying all these days to find in it a melody, straining my ear, but the idea of non- co-operation, with its mighty volume of sound, does not sing to me; its congregated menace of negation shouts, And I say to myself, “If you cannot keep step with your countrymen at this great crisis of their history, never say that you are tight and the rest of them wrong; only give up your role as a soldier, go back to your corner as a poet, be ready to accept popular derision and disgrace."
R—, in support of the present movement, has often said to me that passion for rejection is a stronger power in the beginning than the acceptance of an
