dent bestowed on me at the end
must have been the moving effect of my young voice together with the
earnestness and variety of its efforts. But I must make the confession
to-day that the opinion I voiced with such enthusiasm that evening was
wrong.

The art of vocal music has its own special functions and features. And
when it happens to be set to words the latter must not presume too much
on their opportunity and seek to supersede the melody of which they are
but the vehicle. The song being great in its own wealth, why should it
wait upon the words? Rather does it begin where mere words fail. Its
power lies in the region of the inexpressible; it tells us what the
words cannot.

So the less a song is burdened with words the better. In the classic
style of Hindustan[49] the words are of no account and leave the melody
to make its appeal in its own way. Vocal music reaches its perfection
when the melodic form is allowed to develop freely, and carry our
consciousness with it to its own wonderful plane. In Bengal, however,
the words have always asserted themselves so, that our provincial song
has failed to develop her full musical capabilities, and has remained
content as the handmaiden of her sister art of poetry. From the old
_Vaishnava_ songs down to those of Nidhu Babu she has displayed her
charms from the background. But as in our country the wife rules her
husband through acknowledging her dependence, so our music, though
professedly in attendance only, ends by dominating the song.

I have often felt this while composing my songs. As I hummed to myself
and wrote the lines:

Do not keep your secret to yourself, my love,
But whisper it gently to me, only to me.

I found that the words had no means of reaching by themselves the region
into which they were borne away by the tune. The melody told me that
the secret, which I was so importunate to hear, had mingled with the
green mystery of the forest glades, was steeped in the silent whiteness
of moonlight nights, peeped out of the veil of the illimitable blue
behind the horizon--and is the one intimate secret of Earth, Sky and
Waters.

In my early boyhood I heard a snatch of a song:

Who dressed you, love, as a foreigner?

This one line painted such wonderful pictures in my mind that it haunts
me still. One day I sat down to set to words a composition of my own
while full of this bit of song. Humming my tune I wrote to its
accompaniment:

I kno