Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/790

 748 BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE, [ Chap. classes of society ; but the coarser elements to suit the taste of the mob were inevitable, and thus the grotesque found place side by side with beauty, indecency with humour and the absurd with the natural. Dacarathi Rai was essentially a poet for the masses. In his poem on the Lily and the Bee, the bee, as the lover, being angry with the lily, declares himself an ascetic, and betakes himself to The Lily the forest,*—‘tthe lover of the lily, like the sage টি Cukadeva, went in pensive mood, and gave heed , to no one calling him.” This poem is an inexhaus- tible fund of jest and wit, though towards the end it grows extremely vulgar. But I am afraid | have not done justice to Dagarathi by calling him a poet for the masses only. Curiously enough, he is the author of many songs which breathe lofty religious sentiment and may aimost be placed side by side with those of Rama Prasada and other saintly poets; with his perverse 11 life, his vulgarities and his conceited style of writing, 5 this element was certainly most inconsistent; yet ee he was a man capable of pious sentiment and devo- tional feeling; and whatever may have been his ways and manners, there was an under current of faith in him which comes unmistakably to light in_ his religi- ous songs. The song beginning with.—t “ None Is accountable, O Mother, for my sins. “With my own hands I dug a tank, and in it | have drowned myself.’ — ডাকলে কথা কন না কারো সনে।' 1 “ দোষ কারু নয় গো ম! আম প্বখাদ সলিলে ডুবে মরি শ্যামা।”
 * ,চলিলেন fal ala) যেন শুকদেব গোস্বামী