Page:Srikanta (Part 1).djvu/143

Piari For the first time in my life I realized that night has a form and features of its own, apart from the forms and features of trees and hills, earth and water, field and jungle. I saw night, deep, dark, colossal, seated on the widespread world, under the limitless, black sky of midnight, with eyes closed as in mystic meditation, while the whole universe, with closed lips and bated breath, preserved the inviolate calm. Suddenly my eyes saw a flash of palpitating beauty. What liar, I thought, declared that light alone had beauty, and darkness none? When had I ever seen such an inundation of beauty as the darkness that flooded the earth and the heavens, that flowed about, above, below, and within me in an all-enveloping infinitude, as far as my eye could reach, and beyond? The deeper, the more unthinkable, and the more unlimited a thing was, the darker it was. The limitless ocean was dark; and dark were the interiors of forests, impenetrable and full of ancient mysteries. The beauty of darkness belonged to the divine form that dazzled the eyes of Radha and that flooded the world with the fragrance of love. And He who was the support of the universe, the source of light and movement, the Life of all life, and the Soul of beauty, was He not an impenetrable darkness to the eyes of men? Was that because in reality He was dark, or was darkness a synonym for anything incomprehensible, unknowable, and impenetrable? Was that why death and the other world appeared to man's vision as mysterious, black, and unfathomable?