Page:Love in Hindu Literature.djvu/17

 LOVE IN HINDU LITERATURE. 3 4

It is the Petrarchan Italianated atmosphere of Romeo and Juliet.

Chitra is a study. in the sense-man, in the glories and enjoyments of the life in the flesh. " The southern breeze caressed me to sleep. From the flowering Malati "bower overhead silent kisses dropped over my body. On my hair, my breast, my feet, each flower chose a bed to die on. I slept. And, suddenly in the depth of my sleep, I felt as if some intense eager look, like tapering fingers of flame, touched my slumbering body. -I started up and saw the Hermit standing before me. The moon had moved to the west The air was lieavy with perfume ; the silence of the night was vocal with the chirping of cricket It seemed to me that I had, on opening my eyes, died to all realities of life and undergone a dream-birth into a shadow land. Shame slipped to my feet like loosened clothes. I heard his call — ' Beloved, my most beloved ! ' And all my for- gotten lives united as one and responded to it. I said, '■ Take me, take all I am ! ' And I stretched out my -arms to him. The moon set behind the trees. One ■curtain of darkness covered all With the first gleam of light I rose up He lay asleep with a vague smile about his lips." The whole scene reminds one of the "chamber of dreams" superintended by "the Spirit of Love " in Rossetti's Dante's Dream.

Further, " With green leaves wet from the spray -of the foaming waterfall, I have made our noonday bed in cavern dark as night. There the cool of the soft green mosses thick on the black and dripping stone Jcisses your, eyes to sleep. Let me guide you thither."

With a.11 these we are refreshing our memory of