What do you mean? Oh, dear, Poet, you will undo everything, if
you talk like that. You are destroying my peace of mind. Call
Sruti-bhushan. Let some one call the Pundit.

What I mean, King, is this. We are the true Renouncers, because
change is our very secret. We lose, in order to find. We have no
faith in the never-changing.

What do you mean?

Haven't you noticed the detachment of the rushing river, as it
runs splashing from its mountain cave? It gives itself away so
swiftly, and only thus it finds itself. What is never-changing,
for the river, is the desert sand, where it loses its course.

Ah, but listen, Poet--listen to those cries there outside. That
is your world. How do you deal with that?

King, they are your starving people.

My people, Poet? Why do you call them that? They are the world's
people, not mine. Have I created their miseries? What can your
youthful Poet Renouncers do to relieve sufferings like theirs?
Tell me that.

King, it is we alone who can truly bear those sufferings, because
we are like the river that flows on in gladness, thus lightening
our burden, and the burden of the world. But the hard, metalled
road is fixed and never-changing. And so it makes the burden more
burdensome. The heavy loads groan and creak along it, and cut
deep gashes in its breast. We Poets call to every one to carry
all their joys and sorrows lightly, in a rhythmic measure. Our
call is the Renouncers' call.

Ah, Poet, now I don't care a straw for Sruti-bhushan. Let the
Pundit go hang. But, do you know what my trouble is now? Though I
can't, for the life of me, understand your words, the music
haunts me. Now, it's just the other way round with the Pundit.
His words are clear enough, and they obey the rules of syntax
quite correctly. But the tune!--No, it's no use telling you any
further.

King, our words don't speak, they sing.

Well, Poet, what do you want to do now?

King, I'm going to have a race through those cries, which are
rising outside your gate.

What do you mean? Famine relief is for men of business. Poets
oughtn't to have anything to do with things like that.

King, business men always make their business so out of tune.
That is why we Poets hasten to tune it.

Now come, my dear Poet, do speak in plainer language.

King, they work, because they must. We work, because we are in
love with life. That is why they condemn us as unpractical, and
we condemn them as lifeless.

But who is righ