Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/537

 V.]. BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. 501 thought how best he could break the fetters that bound him to the world and join the great master. He studied religious books with great devotion and spent five years in a sort of spiritual agony which made him pale and emaciated,—it was the struggle of the bird in the cage that pants for the free air. By this time Chaitanya had again come to Cantipur. People flocked from all parts of Bengal to have a sight of the great devotee who was already recog- nised in many circles as an incarnation of Visnu. Raghunath in deep distress threw himself at the feet of his parents and besought them with tearful eyes to grant him leave to see the god-like man. He said that he would die of grief if permission were withheld. They could not resist his pathetic appeal and with a strong escort sent him to Cantipur. There the boy lay at the feet of Chaitanya, unable to utter a word sighing and sobbing like a maiden in love. Chaitanya’s attitude towards him was severe even to rudeness. He admonished the young man for his resolution to renounce the world prematurely. ‘Go back home,” he said; ‘for you have duties to do where the Lord has placed you, and it would be a sin to avoid them; be not too much attached to the worldly life, but consider yourself as serving the will of the Lord, and if in course of time there comes to you a fitness to renounce the world by His grace, there will be no tension or strain in your efforts to attain that end. It will then be a perfectly natural and easy matter, as when the fruit is ripe, it falls to the ground of itself.” Raghunath obeyed the great master and came back to his father’s palace. For a few years he