Page:Love in Hindu Literature.djvu/94

 So, VI. THE DIGNITY OF SEX.

sentinel, and the lamp and seem almost to forget the person of, the. loverimpassioned speaker. And yet in her heart is the commotion of boiling emotion. This is the sensuous spiritualized — an excellent example of samyanm or self-restraint in art. Tagore has given us a picture of "those times in love between man and woman when, " to quote Stopford Brooke again, "the sensuous element is lifted, by pure joy and emotion into the . spiritual world and there transfigured ; and when the. spiritual element, is brought into the sensuous till it is made, as it were, palpable, embodied, incarnated when both sense and spirit . are. fused into one fire."

This expression of the sensuous through the " fusion of sense and spirit " is to be distinguished. from the expression of the. super-sensuous or spiritual in and through the sensuous. Let us hear Vivek-ananda lectur- ing on Bhakti or Devotion (spiritual love) :

"Love knows no fear, How can you frighten love ? Does the lamb love the lion ? The mouse the cat ? The slave the master? Slaves sometimes simulate love, but is it love ? Where do, you ever see love in fear ? It is always sham, Think of a young, mother in the street and a dog barking at her ; she flies into the next house. Suppose the next day she is in the street with her child and a lion Is upon the child ; where will be her position ? Just in the mouth of the lion, protecting her child. Love conquers all. fear. So also is love to God. Who cares whether God . is a rewarder or a punisher ? That is not the thought of a lover. Think of a judge when he comes home, what does his wife see in him ? Not a judge or a rewarder, or a punisher, but her husband, her lover.