, would I be an Arab Bedouin!

While in other parts of the world there is no end to the movement and
clamour of the revelry of free life, we, like the beggar maid, stand
outside and longingly look on. When have we had the wherewithal to deck
ourselves for the occasion and go and join in it? Only in a country
where the spirit of separation reigns supreme, and innumerable petty
barriers divide one from another, need this longing to realise the
larger life of the world in one's own remain unsatisfied.

I strained with the same yearning towards the world of men in my youth,
as I did in my childhood towards outside nature from within the
chalk-ring drawn round me by the servants. How rare, how unattainable,
how far away it seemed! And yet if we cannot get into touch with it, if
from it no breeze can blow, no current come, if no road be there for
the free goings and comings of travellers, then the dead things that
accumulate around us never get removed, but continue to be heaped up
till they smother all life.

During the Rains there are only dark clouds and showers. And in the
Autumn there is the play of light and shade in the sky, but that is not
all-absorbing; for there is also the promise of corn in the fields. So
in my poetical career, when the rainy season was in the ascendant there
were only my vaporous fancies which stormed and showered; my utterance
was misty, my verses were wild. And with the _Sharps and Flats_ of my
Autumn, not only was there the play of cloud-effects in the sky, but out
of the ground crops were to be seen rising. Then, in the commerce with
the world of reality, both language and metre attempted definiteness and
variety of form.

Thus ends another Book. The days of coming together of inside and
outside, kin and stranger, are closing in upon my life. My life's
journey has now to be completed through the dwelling places of men. And
the good and evil, joy and sorrow, which it thus encountered, are not to
be lightly viewed as pictures. What makings and breakings, victories and
defeats, clashings and minglings, are here going on!

I have not the power to disclose and display the supreme art with which
the Guide of my life is joyfully leading me through all its obstacles,
antagonisms and crookednesses towards the fulfilment of its innermost
meaning. And if I cannot make clear all the mystery of this design,
whatever else I may try to show is sure to prove misleading at every
step. To analyse the imag