No! he had another consolation; for the man who had set aside wine as an enhancement of pleasure, now took to it as a lessener of care. The Cup-of-Life for him was filled again and again with the Wine-of-Death, and he laughed as he quaffed at its bubbles on the rim. Vaguely, too, came to him a sort of disgust at dogmatic creeds. He would sit and sing Sufic odes with fervour, and praise.
Perhaps with a man of his temperament, it was only to be expected.
"The wine, the lamp which night and day
Lights us along our weary way.
Sâki! thou knowest I worship wine,
Let that delicious cup be mine,
Wine! pure and limpid as my tears."
[BOOK III]
FRUIT TIME
1525 TO 1530
CHAPTER I
"The Long Years slide,
The Door of Life stands wide,
Ghosts creep inside,
With their dead fingers hide
Present from Past.
Dear God be kind!
Grant that I keep enshrined
Within my mind
The Love of Human-kind,
Until the Last"
Babar sat overlooking a Kâbul valley, a tall, straight, still athletic man of two-and-forty.
Twelve years had passed since, broken, crestfallen at his failure to keep the loyalty of Samarkand, he had shaken the dust of his kingly hopes in Transoiana from him for ever, returned to Kâbul and set himself another emprise--the conquest of India. Thus far he had not succeeded. Three or four attempts had been made, in themselves satisfactory, in result futile. On his last expedition he had got as far as Lahore; but he had had to return for reinforcements to Kâbul, leaving a doubtfully-loyal governor in the Punjâb. So he was still no more, no less, than King-of-Kâbul; for those twelve years had brought a marked diminution in the vivid initiative of his younger years. He was up at dawn as usual, it is true; the wine he had drunk overnight had never been allowed to cloud his days; yet those twelve comparatively empty years remained, and remain, in mute testimony to the toxic power of the body over the mind. He felt this himself vaguely; for he was always sensitive to the touch of truth.