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 CHAPTER VI

THE BABE'S PARADISE

imagination of the poet is very near the child's. In the Indian Vaishnava song, which is not meant for children at all, you often find touches of their fantasy, recalling the way in which they surprise the young god in their midst, or find the wonder of the world in the dust at their feet. Such is the cry of the shepherd-boys in one song, often quoted, who find they have been playing with Krishna and treating him as a common school-fellow:

You have only to reverse the magic lens in order that the grown-up man or woman may look at the child with the same wonder and sense of new discovery. Its ways are at once 65