w you, O Woman from the strange land!
Your dwelling is across the Sea.

Had the tune not been there I know not what shape the rest of the poem
might have taken; but the magic of the melody revealed to me the
stranger in all her loveliness. It is she, said my soul, who comes and
goes, a messenger to this world from the other shore of the ocean of
mystery. It is she, of whom we now and again catch glimpses in the dewy
Autumn mornings, in the scented nights of Spring, in the inmost recesses
of our hearts--and sometimes we strain skywards to hear her song. To
the door of this world-charming stranger the melody, as I say, wafted
me, and so to her were the rest of the words addressed.

Long after this, in a street in Bolpur, a mendicant _Baul_ was singing
as he walked along:

How does the unknown bird flit in and out of the cage!
Ah, could I but catch it, I'd ring its feet with my love!

I found this _Baul_ to be saying the very same thing. The unknown bird
sometimes surrenders itself within the bars of the cage to whisper
tidings of the bondless unknown beyond. The heart would fain hold it
near to itself for ever, but cannot. What but the melody of song can
tell us of the goings and comings of the unknown bird?

That is why I am always reluctant to publish books of the words of
songs, for therein the soul must needs be lacking.

(32) _The River-side_

When I returned home from the outset of my second voyage to England, my
brother Jyotirindra and sister-in-law were living in a river-side villa
at Chandernagore, and there I went to stay with them.

The Ganges again! Again those ineffable days and nights, languid with
joy, sad with longing, attuned to the plaintive babbling of the river
along the cool shade of its wooded banks. This Bengal sky-full of light,
this south breeze, this flow of the river, this right royal laziness,
this broad leisure stretching from horizon to horizon and from green
earth to blue sky, all these were to me as food and drink to the hungry
and thirsty. Here it felt indeed like home, and in these I recognised
the ministrations of a Mother.

That was not so very long ago, and yet time has wrought many changes.
Our little river-side nests, clustering under their surrounding
greenery, have been replaced by mills which now, dragon-like, everywhere
rear their hissing heads, belching forth black smoke. In the midday
glare of modern life even our hours of mental siesta have been n