Page:Works of Tagore from the Modern Review, 1909-24 Segment 1.pdf/108

564 syllables of the word Shekhara he composed verses in ceaseless flow. He asked, "What connection has a khara (=ass) with the lake of lotuses? And how far has that animal succeeded in spite of its strenuous practice of music? Saraswati (the goddess of poetry) is known to be seated on the Pundarik (=lotus.) What offence has she committed in your majesty's realm that here she has been disgraced by being mounted on an ass (khara)?"

At this reply the scholars burst into a loud laugh, in which the courtiers joined; and, following their example, all the assembled people, whether they understood anything or not, began to laugh.

The king prodded his poet-friend with glances keen as the elephant's goad, time after time, in expectation of a proper reply. But Shekhar sat unmoved without minding his hint at all.

Then the king, his heart full of wrath for Shekhar, stepped down from his throne, and transferred his own pearl-necklace to the neck of Pundarik. The audience shouted applause. From the harem was heard the jingle of many bracelets, wristlets and anklets shaken all at once. At this sound Shekhar left his seat and slowly walked out of the Audience Hall.

The dark night of the fourteenth day of the waning moon! Thick gloom everywhere. Through the open windows the south wind, laden with the incense of flowers, was entering the houses of the city like a universal comrade of mankind. From the wooden shelf of his room Shekhar took down his books and heaped them up before him. From them he picked out and laid aside his own compositions.

There were many works, written during many years. Several of them he himself had almost forgotten. He turned their leaves over and skipped them here and there. To-day they all seemed to him utterly worthless.

He sighed, "Is this a whole life's garnering? Only a lot of words, metres, and rhymes!" To-day he failed to see that they embodied any beauty, any eternal joy of mankind, any echo of the music of the universe, any expression of his heart's depths. As a sick man loses relish for every kind of dish, so to-day he flung aside whatever he took up in his hands. The king's friendship, public fame, his heart's wild dream, the witchery of fancy, all seemed hollow mockeries in this dark night. Then he tore up his manuscripts one by one and flung them into the blazing fire before him. Suddenly an ironical idea flashed through his mind: he smiled and said to himself, "Great monarchs celebrate the horse-sacrifice, to-day I am celebrating a poem-sacrifice!" But immediately afterwards he felt that the simile was not a happy one,—"The horse is sacrificed when it returns home after its master's victory over all sides, but I am sacrificing my poems on the day when my muse has been beaten; I ought to have done it long ago."

One by one he consigned all his books to the fire. The flames shot up fiercely; the poet shook his empty hands violently in the air and cried out, "To thee I sacrifice, to thee, to thee, O fair nymph of fire, to thee I sacrifice them. So long I had been offering my all to thee; to-day I make an utter end of them. Long hadst thou been raging in my heart, thou Fire-shaped Enchantress! Had I been gold, I might have come out purer from the process,—but I am a humble weed, and so to-day I have been shrivelled up to ashes."

It was a late hour of night. Shekhar opened all the windows of his room. In the evening he had gathered the flowers that he loved best; all of them were white,—juin, bel, and gandharaj. He strewed handfuls of them on his bed, and lighted the lamps in the four corners of the room. Then he mixed the juice of a poisonous plant with honey, drank it off quietly, and retired to his bed. (Slowly) his limbs grew benumbed, and his eyes closed.

A tinkle of anklets! The fragrance of braided tresses entered the room, borne on the south wind.

With closed eyes the poet asked, "Goddess of my adoration! At last, at last, thou hast taken pity on thy worshipper? At last, thou hast appeared to him?"

A sweet voice replied, "Yes, poet, I have come."

Shekhar started, opened his eyes, and—lo! there was a matchless female form standing by his bed.

Dim-eyed with the haze of death he could not see her clearly. It seemed as if the