The Dream World of

Duties towards the Country One in hundreds is brave, one in thousands is learned, one in hundreds of thousands is an expounder, but it cannot be said whether one is a donor. One is not brave merely by winning a battle, not merely by studying scripture is one learned, not by mere eloquence is one an expounder, and not only by giving money is one a donor.⁵⁰⁴ Convinced as he was that ‘‘success in the modern world has to be obtained only by adaptation to the needs of modern life, he wished his fellow-Hindus to unite an inner light of Divine philosophy, drawn from their traditional sources, and generously interpreted, to a mastery of physical science, and the means of natural improvement.’’ Jurist, statesman, scholar, orator, poet, lover of Nature, and meditative sage, he remains to the West the convincing proof that “it is by the word and example of him and his like that India must be regenerated, and the moral endowments of her children made noble, serviceable for the general welfare of mankind.”⁵⁰⁵ Year by year the leaders of Indian thought in India spread their influence over ever-widening circles, though what the final result may be when these leaders, infused with all the best of the spirit of the East and West, rise up to proclaim that East and West have met, and from the union new forms of thought, new modes of artistic expression, new ways of viewing life, new solutions of religious, social, and moral problems been produced as they must be, is one that the whole past history of the world teaches us to be watched with hope, not fear or doubt.⁵⁰⁶ On a poet’s lips I slept, Dreaming like a love-adept In the sound his breathing kept. Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses But feeds on the aerial kisses Of shapes that haunt thought’s wildernesses. He will watch from dawn to gloom The lake-reflected sun illume The yellow bees in the ivy bloom, Nor heed nor see what things they be, But from these create he can Forms more real than living man, Nurslings of immortality! One of these awakened me And I sped to succour thee.⁵⁰⁷ Kumud wrapped herself around Sarasvatichandra’s heart like a creeper to a tree trunk. Her subtle body forgot the existence of the physical one. One heart felt another; her face reflected her innermost feelings. The sun had begun its journey towards the horizon. Its light entered the heart of this couple as the physical world came under the sway of the night. The moon and moonbeams both blossomed to give pleasure to this immortal couple. ‘Kumud! Beloved Kumud! The power of the Primeval Being spreads across the world; similarly these moonbeams have spread their light across all realms,’ Sarasvatichandra said as he looked in all four directions. Kumud: ‘It is so. It is the beautiful result of the moon’s immortality.’ Sarasvatichandra: ‘My heart aspires that we shall spend this long night as if