YOU MAKER of pictures,

a ceaseless traveller among men and things,

rounding them up in your net of vision

and bringing them out in lines

far above their social value and market price.

Yonder colony of the outcaste,

its crowd of rustic roofs,

and an empty field in the background

scorched by the angry April sun

are hurriedly passed by and never missed,

till your wayfaring lines spoke out;

they are there,

and we started up and said, indeed they are.

Those nameless tramps fading away every moment into shadows

were rescued from their nothingness

and compelled us to acknowledge

a greater appeal of the real in them

than is possessed by the rajahs

who lavish money on their portraits of dubious worth

for fools to gape at in wonder.

You ignored the mythological steed of paradise

when your eyes were caught by a goat

who is only noticed with our expostulation

when straying on our brinjal plot.

You brought out its own majesty of goatliness in your lines

and our mind woke up into a surprise.

The poor goat-seller remains ignorant of the fact

that the picture does not represent the commonplace beast that is

his own,

but it is a discovery.