IF I WERE living in the royal town of Ujjain, when Kalidas was the king's poet, I should know some Malwa girl and fill my thoughts with the music of her name. She would glance at me through the slanting shadow of her eyelids, and allow her veil to catch in the jasmine as an excuse for lingering near me. This very thing happened in some past whose track is lost under time's dead leaves. The scholars fight to-day about dates that play hide-and-seek. I do not break my heart dreaming over flown and vanished ages: but alas and alas again, that those Malwa girls have followed them! To what heaven, I wonder, have they carried in their flower-baskets those days that tingled to the lyrics of the king's poet? This morning, separation from those whom I was born too late to meet weighs on and saddens my heart. Yet April carries the same flowers with which they decked their hair, and the same south breeze fluttered their veils as whispers over modern roses. And, to tell the truth, joys are not lacking to this spring, though Kalidas sing no more; and I know, if he can watch me from the Poets' Paradise, he has reasons to be envious.
