And threw his hands out as he smiled,
And “Empty,” was the word he said.
And so he sat beside our fire,
As strange birds drop from alien skies,
Gentle but distant, never nigher,
With that remoteness in his eyes.
This was a man of about fifty-five, tall, thin, with a sensitive face, yet with something soldierly about him; dignified and quiet, with fine hawk-like features and strained bright eyes in hollow caves behind the gaunt cheek-bones. A beautiful face in both line and expression; a true mystic, if ever I saw one!
He told me he had walked from Bengal (look at the map and see what that means!) and that the poor people were very kind and gave him a little rice sometimes, when they had it, and sometimes a tiny coin, asking only his prayers in return. That he needed very little, never touching meat or fish or eggs, which he did not think could be pleasing to God. For sixteen years he had been thus passing from one sacred place to the other—from the holy Benares to Hardwar where the Ganges leaves the hills, and farther still, praying—praying to the One. “There is One God,” he said; and again I thought of Kabir, the supreme mystic, the incarnate Joy, who also wandered through India,—striving, like this man:
He has looked upon God, and his eyeballs are clear;
There was One, there is One, and but One, saith Kabir,—