Page:Works of Tagore from the Modern Review, 1909-24 Segment 1.pdf/106

562 the king, "I am truly thine. If you want to make me stand before the wide world and test me, you may do so. But——." Then he lowered his glance.

Pundarik had stood like a lion, Shekhar like a deer ringed round by hunters. He was a mere youth, his face tender with bashfulness and sweetness, pale-cheeked, slender of limb, the very look of him suggesting that at the touch of emotion all his body would quiver and break into song, like the strings of a lyre.

With head bent down, he began in a low tone. Possibly none caught his first verse clearly. Then he slowly raised his face;—where he cast his gaze it seemed as if the crowd and the stone-walls of the Court dissolved and vanished into nothingness amidst the far off past. His sweet and clear voice tremulously rose higher and higher like a bright flame of light. First he sang of the king's ancestors in the lunar line. And then gradually he led the royal narrative down to his own age, through many a war and struggle, many a heroic feat and sacrifice (yajna), many alms-givings and noble institutions connected with them. At last his gaze, so long fixed on the memory of the past, was turned and planted on the king's face; and, incarnating in a metrical form the universal unspoken loyalty in the hearts of the populace of the kingdom, he set it up in the middle of the Audience-hall,——as if, the heart-stream of myriads of subjects had rushed from afar and filled with a noble hymn that ancient palace of the king's fore-fathers,—as if it touched, hugged and kissed every stone of that edifice,—as if it rose [like a fountain] up to the high window of the harem-gallery, and bowed in tender loyalty at the feet of the royal ladies, (the indwelling spirits of goodness of the palace), and returned thence to walk round the king and his throne a thousand times in tumultuous rapture. The poet concluded, "Sir King! I can be defeated in words, but not in devotion," and then sat down palpitating [with his efforts.] The people, bathed in tears, shook the sky with their hurrahs.

Pundarik rose up again, chiding this wild outburst of the vulgar populace with a scornful laugh. With an exulting shout he asked, "What is there higher than word?" In a moment all were hushed to Silence.

Then in a variety of metres he gave expression to his matchless scholarship, and proved from the Vedas, the Vedanta, the Puranas, &c., that the is the supreme thing in the universe. The Word is verity, the Word is the Godhead. The Hindu Trinity,—Brahmá, Vishnu, and Shiva,—are all subject to the Word; therefore the Word must be higher than they. Brahmá with his four mouths cannot exhaust the Word;—Shiva with his five mouths has failed to reach the last of words and has therefore at last silently sat down in meditation in search of the Word.

Thus piling up scholarship on scholarship, scripture on scripture, he built for the Word a cloud-kissing throne, seated the Word above the heads of Earth and Heaven alike, and again asked in a voice of thunder, "What is there higher than word?"

Proudly he glanced round; but none gave reply. Then he slowly resumed his seat. The scholars cried, "Well spoken, well spoken," "Bless you." The king was lost in amazement. And the poet Shekhar felt himself very small by the side of such vast erudition. The assembly was broken up for that day.

Next day Shekhar came and began his song:—The scene is at Brindaban; the notes of a flute are heard, but the milk-maids do not yet know who is playing on it nor where. At times the music seemed to float on the south wind, at others it seemed to come from the peak of the Govardhan hill in the north; once it seemed as if some one were standing on the Hill of Sunrise and calling them to a love meeting, again it appeared as if some one seated on the verge of the Sunset Range were weeping in the pang of lorn love. It seemed as if the flute were speaking from every wave of the Jamuna,—as if every star of the sky were a stop of the pipe. At last its notes were heard issuing from every grove, every street, every ghat of Brindaban,—from fruit and flower, from earth and water, from above, below, within and without. None understood what the flute was saying, none could perceive clearly what his heart longed to say in response to the notes. Only tears awoke drowning their eyes; only a yearn-