Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/174

 The first meeting. Krisna’s stealthy visits, 144 BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. ([Chap. — of her hair fall loose behind, black as the clouds or as the bees, but soft and curling like the tender Caibala (moss.) Her eye-brows are bent, in the graceful curves of a bow, and her forehead beams with the lustre of the moon. The playfulness of her eyes reminds one of the bird Khafijana; her beauti- ful nose is like the Tila flower ; her lips have the hue of coral, and so on. Radha’s lovely form glows with shy happiness at the thought of this first meeting. She goes out in the dark night to meet her lover, covering herself with a Sadi of dark silk. She trusts to her guides, but when brought to the bower made by the maidens for the interview, she hesitates ; she fears to enter ; her heart is full of ten- derness and love, but a feeling of shyness and deli- cacy holds her back. The maidens lead her in, inspite of her gentle protests, and she finds herself face to face with Krisna. Her eyes droop; she dares not lift them even to see that beautiful face at which she could never be weary of gazing. The tender- ness of the meeting is indescribable. The delicate maiden cannot say one word in response to the many, with which she is greeted; and when she comes back she is overwhelmed with remorse at the recollection of her own failure. By degrees, however, all this is changed. In a_ subsequent canto she is found relating to her maidens the manoeuvres adopted by Krisha in order to meet her, such as at the moment when her sister-in-law was asleep, resting her head on her lap, and he came gently from behind her, to steal a kiss. In these descriptions, as I have said, there is an exuberance of sensuousness, and songs of Vidya- pati would never have passed for religious writings, )]