The Gardener (Tagore)/83

SHE dwelt on the hillside by the edge of a maize-field, near the spring that flows in laughing rills through the solemn shadows of ancient trees. The women came there to fill their jars, and travellers would sit there to rest and talk. She worked and dreamed daily to the tune of the bubbling stream. One evening the stranger came down from the cloud-hidden peak; his locks were tangled like drowsy snakes. We asked in wonder, “Who are you?” He answered not but sat by the garrulous stream and silently gazed at the hut she dwelt. Our hearts quaked in fear an we came back home when it was night. Next morning when the women came to fetch water at the spring by the deodar trees, they found the doors open in her hut, but her voice was gone and where was her smiling face? The empty jar lay on the floor and her lamp had burnt itself out in the corner. No one knew where she had fled to before it was morning — and the stranger had gone. In the month of May the sun grew strong and the snow melted, and we sat by the spring and wept. We wondered in our mind, “Is there a spring in the land where she has gone and where she can fill her vessel in these hot thirsty days?” And we asked each other in dismay, “Is there a land beyond these hills where we live?” It was a summer night; the breeze blew from the south; and I sat in her deserted room where the lamp stood still unlit. When suddenly from before my eyes the hills vanished like curtains drawn aside. “Ah, it is she who comes. How are you, my child? Are you happy? But where can you shelter under this open sky? And, alas, our spring is not here to allay your thirst.” “Here is the same sky,” she said, “only free from the fencing hills, — this is the same stream grown into a river, — the same earth widened into a plain.” “Everything is here,” I sighed, “only we are not.” She smiled sadly and said, “You are in my heart.” I woke up and heard the babbling of the steram and the rustling of the deodars at night.