Francis and to
William Blake who have seemed so alien in our violent history.
We write long books where no page perhaps has any quality to make
writing a pleasure, being confident in some general design, just
as we fight and make money and fill our heads with politics--all
dull things in the doing--while Mr. Tagore, like the Indian
civilization itself, has been content to discover the soul and
surrender himself to its spontaneity. He often seems to contrast
life with that of those who have loved more after our fashion,
and have more seeming weight in the world, and always humbly as
though he were only sure his way is best for him: 'Men going home
glance at me and smile and fill me with shame. I sit like a
beggar maid, drawing my skirt over my face, and when they ask me,
what it is I want, I drop my eyes and answer them not.' At
another time, remembering how his life had once a different
shape, he will say, 'Many an hour I have spent in the strife of
the good and the evil, but now it is the pleasure of my playmate
of the empty days to draw my heart on to him; and I know not why
this sudden call to what useless inconsequence.
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