Page:Bengali Religious Lyrics, Śākta.pdf/29

Rh which were just physical union, neither more nor less—and then publicly vanquished her (by her connivance) in learning. Rāmprasād's well-known contemporary, Bharātchandra Ray, the rājkavi or king's poet of Kṛishṇagar, wrote a better poem with the same theme and title, his treatment being erotic and grossly indecent. Ramprāsād allegorises the story; even so, the poem is not one of which his admirers are proud.

But the Śākta poems are a different matter. These have gone to the heart of a people as few poets' work has done.Such songs as the exquisite 'This day will surely pass, Mother, this day will pass,' I have heard from coolies on the road or workers in the paddy fields I have heard it by broad rivers at sunset, when the parrots were flying to roost and the village folk thronging from marketing to the ferry. Once I asked the top class in a mofussil high school to write out a song of Rabindranath Tagore's; two boys out of forty succeeded, a result which I consider showed the very real diffusion of his songs. But, when I asked for a song of Rāmprasād's, every boy except two responded. Truly, a poet who is known both by work and name to boys between fourteen and eighteen, is a national poet.Tagore's songs are heard in Calcutta streets, and have been widely spread by the student community and the Brahmo Samaj; but in the villages of Bengal they are unknown, while Rāmprasād's are heard everywhere. The peasants and the paṇḍits enjoy his songs equally. They draw solace from them in the hour of despair and even at the moment of death. The dying man brought to the banks of the Ganges asks his companions to sing Rāmprasādī songs .'

Sister Nivedita compared Rāmprasād with Blake. He resembles rather Herrick, in his self-consciousness and his habit of looking at himself from outside. But these are only casual and partial affinities. His lyrics at their simplest often have the quality of a snatch of