I stood, a little while since, on the very edge of a plateau, that fell down sheer four thousand feet or more, into the valley of Mysore. Far in the distance to the north, the dense dark green forest jungle stretched away like a carpet, intersected here and there by Moyar's silver streams, with here and there a velvet boss, where a rounded hill stood up out of the plain. That carpet, as it seemed from the height, so uniform and close in its texture, is made of great trees, under which wander wild elephants in herds. To right and left, the valley ran both ways out of sight, like a monster chasm with one side removed. And in the air below, above, around, light wreaths and ragged fragments of cloud and mist floated and streamed and drifted, casting the most beautifully deep blue shifting shadows not only on the earth, but on the air, like waterfalls of colour, half hiding and half framing the distant view, and cutting the sunlight into intermittent fountains of a golden semi-purple rain that fell and changed, now here, now there, now, as you looked upon them, gone, now suddenly shooting out elsewhere to transform every colour that they touched into something other than it was, like a magic show suddenly thrown out by the Creator in the silent and unfrequented solitude of his hills, for sheer delight and as it were simply for his own amusement, not caring in the least whether there might be any eye open to catch and worship such a beautiful profusion of his power, or not. For, strange! the spell and mysterious appeal of all such momentary glimpses lies, not in what you see, but in what you do not hear: it is the dead silence, the stillness, that by a paradox seems to be the undertone, or background, of moving mist and lonely mountain peaks.
So as I stood, gazing, there came suddenly from the east, a whisper, a mutter; a low sound, that suggested a distant mixture of wind and sea. And I turned round, and looked, and I saw a sight that I never shall see again; such a sight as a man can hardly expect to see twice, in the time of a single life. Rain—but was it rain?—rain in a terrific wall, a dark precipice of appalling gloom, rain that rose like a colossal curtain from earth to heaven and north to south, was coming up the valley straight towards me, and it struck me, as I saw it, with a thrill that was almost dread. That was what the people saw, long ago, when the Deluge suddenly came upon them. It came on, steadily, swiftly, like a thing with orders to carry out, and a purpose to fulfil, cutting the valley athwart with the edge of its solid front, sharp as that of a knife laid on a slice of bread: a black ominous mass of elemental obliteration, out of which there came a voice like the rushing of a flood and the beating of wings, mixed with a kind of wail, like the noise of the cordage of a ship, in a gale at sea. It blotted out creation, and in the phrase of old Herodotus, day suddenly became night. A moment later, I stood in whirling rain and fog that made sight useless a yard away, as wet as one just risen from the sea, with a soul on the very verge of cursing the Creator, for so abruptly dropping the curtain on his show: forgetting, in my ingratitude, first, the favour he had done me; secondly, how many were those who had not seen; lastly, and above all, that it was the very dropping of that stupendous curtain that gave its finishing touch and climax to the show. For he knows best, after all. Introduce into Nature were it but a single atom of stint, of parsimony, of preservation, of regret for loss; and the power, and with it, the sublimity of the infinite is gone. Were Nature to pose, to attitudinise for contemplation, even for the fraction of a second, she would annihilate the condition on which reposes all her charm. Ruthless destruction, even of her own choicest works, is the badge of her inexhaustible omnipotence: add but a touch of pity, and you fall back to the littleness and feebleness of man.
And I mused, as I departed: how can that be communicated to others, which cannot even be described at all? And if so, in the things of the body, how much more with the things of the soul? Who shall convey to the souls that stumble and jostle in the foggy valleys, any glimpse of the visions, denied to them, above; any spark of comprehension of the things that they might discern, on the tops of the pure and silent hills, that stand uncomprehended, kissing heaven above the fog?
Poona, 1914
I
A TWILIGHT EPIPHANY
The three worlds worship the sound of the string that twanged of old like the hum of bees[5] as it slipped from faint Love's faltering hand and fell at his feet unstrung, the bow unbent and the shaft unsped, as if to beg for mercy from that other shaft of scorching flame that shot from the bow-despising brow of the moony-crested god.
Far down in the southern quarter, at the very end of the Great Forest, just where the roots of its outmost trees are washed by the waves of the eastern sea, there was of old a city, which stood on the edge of land and water, like as the evening moon hangs where light and darkness meet. And just outside the city wall where the salt sand drifts in the wind, there was a little old ruined empty temple of the Lord of the Moony Tire, whose open door was as it were guarded by two sin-destroying images of the Deity and his wife, one on the right of the threshold and the other on the left, looking as if they had suddenly started asunder, surprised by the crowd of devotees, to make a way between. And on an evening long ago, when the sun had finished setting, Maheshwara was returning from Lanká to his own home on Kailás, with Umá in his arms. So as he went, he looked down, and saw the temple away below. And he said to his beloved: Come, now, let us go down, and revisit this little temple, which has stood so long without us. And it looks white in the moon's rays, as if it had turned pale, for fear that we have forgotten it.