Page:The Spirit Of Oriental Poetry.pdf/20

 II THE BHAKTA WHEN SONG OF LOVE IS SERVICE He lives who loves God's Person No one else is alive −Guru Nanak. The poet of the East, the Bhakta, is bare like a child, playing in God's sunshine, clothed in his own tran- scendent innocence, and flling his soul with the gladness of the honey-bee He is always wending towards the Shrine of the Beloved He buns with an inextinguishable desire for the divine. The life of the palace sickens him Tolstoy had the tastes of an Eastern poet, though he made his mind sick with renunciation

The deep sincerity of Omar Khayyam, rich with the red of the grape, comes to every poet of the East who rebels against the glaring hypocrisy of the priest. The Sadhu's Dhunt--the fire of life---is ever burn- ing! Shiva sits before his Dhuna, from whose glowing depths curl ever upward the clouds of purple, scented smoke.

The poet casts all that he sings behind him, dropping petals of roses on his path as he travels in simless musing. He grows weary of the sky above him and of the earth beneath him. His life is like the fluttering of an imprisoned eagle who pants for freedom. In the 10