Page:Rabindranath Tagore - A Biographical Study.djvu/69

 rhyme of her hopes and fears, and her wonder at herself:

Is that not finely conceived in the maiden grace and sympathy of the poet's understanding? Add only to it the spell of the Indian, and the wailing and elvish music in which the night wind and the darkness are suggested, and the lyric picture is complete.

The forms and the sounds of nature are always waiting in these songs, ready to quicken the love-interest. In the eleventh song occurs a cloud-motive: flocks of cranes fly up from the river-bank, and gusts of wind rush over the heath, and the cattle run to their stalls. In vain the maiden lights her lamp to do her hair and arrange her wreath; the wind blows it out. Who can know now that her eyelids have not been touched by lamp-black? "Your eyes are darker than rain-clouds," sings the lover; "Come as you are.… Who cares if your wreath is woven or not, or if your flower-chain is linked?" and again the cloud-motive is repeated: "The sky is overcast. Come as you are."

In the next page, the song of the lake, the