Page:Shantiniketan; the Bolpur School of Rabindranath Tagore.djvu/70

50 and never hides or obscures it except where we ourselves are wilfully blind. Thus the breaking of customs and forms, which have grown round us only to choke true life, is a matter for joy and not sorrow. In Europe this war, which is robbing so many homes by death, is really the tearing off, on a vast scale, of the wrappings of dead habits of mind which have been accumulating for so many years only to smother the truth of our nature. The currents of life which had become choked and stagnant will once more become free to flow in fresh channels.

When death comes to those whom we love, we seem to see the world in its completeness, but without the customary crowd of things which hide from us the reality which underlies the scene. In death’s presence the world becomes like the darkness which is so full that one feels it can be pierced with a needle and yet it seems empty of objects.

Thus the message of this end of the year is the joy of change and its acceptance as the means of achieving a wider vision and grasp of life.

The address was full of illuminating illustrations as all the poet’s addresses are, and I have only given the barest outline of this one in order to give some idea of the kind of subjects which