heart. In the _Nature's Revenge_ there
were shown on the one side the wayfarers and the villagers, content with
their home-made triviality and unconscious of anything beyond; and on
the other the _Sanyasi_ busy casting away his all, and himself, into the
self-evolved infinite of his imagination. When love bridged the gulf
between the two, and the hermit and the householder met, the seeming
triviality of the finite and the seeming emptiness of the infinite alike
disappeared.

This was to put in a slightly different form the story of my own
experience, of the entrancing ray of light which found its way into the
depths of the cave into which I had retired away from all touch with
the outer world, and made me more fully one with Nature again. This
_Nature's Revenge_ may be looked upon as an introduction to the whole of
my future literary work; or, rather this has been the subject on which
all my writings have dwelt--the joy of attaining the Infinite within the
finite.

On our way back from Karwar I wrote some songs for the _Nature's
Revenge_ on board ship. The first one filled me with a great gladness as
I sang, and wrote it sitting on the deck:

Mother, leave your darling boy to us,
And let us take him to the field where we graze our cattle.[52]

The sun has risen, the buds have opened, the cowherd boys are going to
the pasture; and they would not have the sunlight, the flowers, and
their play in the grazing grounds empty. They want their _Shyam_
(Krishna) to be with them there, in the midst of all these. They want to
see the Infinite in all its carefully adorned loveliness; they have
turned out so early because they want to join in its gladsome play, in
the midst of these woods and fields and hills and dales--not to admire
from a distance, nor in the majesty of power. Their equipment is of the
slightest. A simple yellow garment and a garland of wild-flowers are all
the ornaments they require. For where joy reigns on every side, to hunt
for it arduously, or amidst pomp and circumstances, is to lose it.

Shortly after my return from Karwar, I was married. I was then 22 years
of age.

(38) _Pictures and Songs_

_Chhabi o Gan_, Picture and Songs, was the title of a book of poems most
of which were written at this time.

We were then living in a house with a garden in Lower Circular Road.
Adjoining it on the south was a large _Busti_.[53] I would often sit
near a window and watch the sights of this po