I HAVE EVER loved thee in a hundred forms and times, Age after age, in birth following birth. The chain of songs that my fond heart did weave Thou graciously didst take around thy neck, Age after age, in birth following birth. When I listen to the tales of the primitive past, The love-pangs of the far distant times, The meetings and partings of the ancient ages, I see thy form gathering light Through the dark dimness of Eternity And appearing as a star ever fixed in the memory of the All. We two have come floating by the twin currents of love That well up from the inmost heart of the Beginningless. We two have played in the lives of myriad lovers In tearful solitude of sorrow, In tremulous shyness of sweet union, In old old love ever renewing its life. The on-rolling flood of the love eternal Hath at last found its perfect final course. All the joys and sorrows and longings of heart, All the memories of the moments of ecstasy, All the love-lyrics of poets of all climes and times Have come from the everywhere And gathered in one single love at thy feet.
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.