Page:Works of Tagore from the Modern Review, 1909-24 Segment 1.pdf/50

Rh of the life of man. His wife awaits him, gently, lovingly, yet with a sympathy, an heroic potentiality that is still deeper than all her longing sweetness. Yasodhara had a place, it seems in the dreams of the monk-painters of Ajanta, and it was the place of one who could cling in the hour of tenderness, and as easily stand alone and inspire the farewell of a higher call. It was the place of one who was true and faithful to the greatness of her husband, not merely to his daily needs. It was the place of one who attained as a wife, because she was already great as a woman. These were the forms that looked down upon the noble Mahratta and Rajput youth of the Kingdom of the Chalukyas, in their proudest days. Students trained here may have been amongst those who officered the constant wars of their soveriegns [sic] against the Pallavas of Conjeeveram, and repelled the invasions that began to fall upon India by the west coast, from the late seventh century onwards. In their country homes in the rich Indian land, or round the bivouac fires on the field of battle in the after-years, they would turn in their thoughts to these faces, speaking of a nobility and pity that stand alone in human history. A man is what his dreams make him. Can we wonder that that age was great in India whose dreams were even such as these?

HEN the girl was named Subhásini, who knew that she would grow up a dumb girl! Her two elder sisters were called Sukeshini and Suhásini, and for the sake of alliteration the father gave the name of Subhâsini to his youngest daughter. And people abbreviated the name into Subhà.

The two elder girls had been matched at great expense and after a mighty hunt for a bridegroom; now the youngest one weighed heavily upon the oppressed heart of her parents.

It does not come home to every one that one who cannot speak, is capable of feeling; and so, everybody gave vent to their sense of dark misgivings with regard to her future in her very presence. It was borne in upon her from her infancy that she had been born as the curse of God in her father's house; and in consequence of it she always tried to hide herself away from the view of observing eyes. She thought that it would be mighty relief to her if every one could forget her. But does any one forget his pain? She was ever-present in her parents' minds.

Especially, her mother looked upon her in the light of a defect of her own self. For, a mother often deems her daughter to be more closely a part of herself than her son, and any imperfection in the daughter is considered by her to be an occasion for her own disgrace. The father Banikantha rather loved Subha more than his other daughters; but her mother thinking her to be the curse of her womb did not take kindly to her.

Subha had no power of speech, but she had a pair of large, dark, long-lashed eyes, and her delicate lips quivered like tender shoots at the slightest touch of feeling.

The thoughts that we express through the medium of language have to be shaped and moulded to a great extent by our own efforts,—something like the process of translation; it does not always come quite up to the mark, and often we blunder for lack of power. But dark eyes have to translate nothing,—the mind directly casts