Page:One Hundred Poems Kabir (1915).djvu/14

xiv hindered the impassioned meditation of his heart. Hating mere bodily austerities, he was no ascetic, but a married man, the father of a family--a circumstance which Hindu Iegends of the monastic type vainly attempt to conceal or explain--and it was from out of the heart of the common life that he sang his rapturous lyrics of divine love. Here his works corroborate the traditional story of his life. Again and again he extols the life of home, the value and reality of diurnal existence, with its opportunities for love and renunciation; pouring contempt upon the professional sanctity of the Yogi, who “ has a great beard and matted locks, and looks like a goat,” and on all who think it necessary to flee a world pervaded by love, joy, and beauty--the proper theatre of man’s quest--in order to find that One Reality Who