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its am to a well-known eighteenthcentury failure in the same direction, Thomson's Seasons. The names tally, the forms corresponds, both poems adopting the plan of devoting a canto to each season, and the method so far agrees that the Jets have attempted to depict ach season in its principal peculiar
scenes and characteristic. meidents, But here all parallel ends. Wide as the gulf between the genius of one of the greatest world-poets and the talent of the eighteenth-century versifier is the difference between the gathered strength and compact force. the nesterly harmonies and the living truth of the ancient Indian poem ani the diffis artificiality and thetorie of the modern counterpart. And the difference of spirit is not less. The post of n prosaic and
tificial age when the Anglo-Saxon emerged in England and got himself Gallicised, Thomson Was anable to grasp the first psychologeal laws of such descriptive poetry He fixed his eye on the object but he could only see the outside of it. Instead of creating he tried to photograph. And he did not remember or did not know. that Nature is nothing to poetry except in so far as it either a frame, etting or ornament to life or else a living presence to the spirit. Nature interpreted by Wordsworth
a part of his own and the univeral consciousness, by Shakespeare
An accompaniment or note in the orchestral music of life, by mote modern poets as an element of decoration in the living worldpicture is possible in poetry: as an dependent but dead existence it has no place either in the world itself or in the poet's creation. In his relations to the external, life and mind are the man, the senses being only instruments, and what he wks outside himself is I reponse in kind to his own deeper reality. What the eye gathers is only important in so far as it is related to this real man or li lps this expectation to satisfy itself Kalidasa with his fine artistic feeling, his vitality and warm humanismand his profound sense of what true poetry must he, appears to have divined! from the beginning the true place of Nature in the poet's outlook. He is always more emotional and intellectual han spiritual, like Shakespeare to
KARMAYOGIN.
for virile energy is an
whom he has so many striking resemblances We must not expect from him the magical insight of Valmiki, still less the spiritual discernment of Wordsworth. He looks inside but not too far inside. But he realises always the supreme importaree of life as the only abiding foundat of a poem's immortality.
character: unfailing characteristic of the best Sanscrit poetry, and Kalidasa is inferior to none in this respect. His artistic error has nevertheless has disastrous effects on the subkance of his poem.
artistic
its Own
It is written in six cantos answering to the six Indian seasons, SumThe first canto is surcharged with mer, Rain, Autumn, Winter, Dew the life of men and animals and the and Spring. Nothing can exceed life of trees and plants in summer. the splendour and power of the It sets ringing a note of royal opening. We see the poet revelling power and passion and proin the yet virgin boldness, newness Inisex a poem of unexampled and strength of his genius and convigour and interest. But to ring fident of winning the kingdom of variations on this note through six poetry by violence. For a time the cantos seems to have been beyond brilliance of his work seems to jus the young poet's as yet limited expe- tify his ardour. In the poem on rience and narrow imaginative Summer we are at once seized by mastery. He fell back on the life the marvellous force of imagination, of sensuous passion with images of by the unsurpassed closeness and which, no doubt, his ungoverned clear strenuousness of his gaze on youth was most familiar. But inthe object; in the expression there stead of working them into the main is a grand and concentrated precisthought he turned to them for a ion which is our first example of prop and, when his imaginative the great Kalidasian manner and an memory failed him, multiplied imperial power, stateliness and them to make up the deficiency. brevity of speech which is our first This lapse from instance of the high classical diction. uprightness brought But this canto stands on a higher retribution, as all such lapses will. level than the rest of the poem. It From one error indeed Kalidasa's is as if the poet had spent the best vigorous and aspiring temperament part of his force in his first enthusisaved him. He never rolaxed into asm and kept back an insufficient the cloying and effeminate languor reserve for the sustained power of sensuous description which proper to a long poem. The decline offends us in Keats' earlier work. in energy does not disappoint at The Malavas with all their sensuousfirst. The poem on Rain gives us a new luxury and worship of number of fine pictures with a less outward heauty were a masculine vigorous touch but a more dignified and strenuous race, and their male restraint and a graver and nobler and vigorous spirit is as prominent harmony, and even in the Autumn. in Kalidasa as his laver tendencies, where the falling off of vigour be His sensuousness is not coupled with comes very noticeable, there is comweak s If indulgence but is rather a pensation in a more harmonions bold and royal spirit seizing the finish of style, management and beauty and delight of earth to itself imagery. We are led to believe that and compelling all the senses to the poet is finding himself and wil minister to the enjoyment of the rise to a finale of flawless beauty. spirit rather than enslaving the spiThen comes disappointment. In the it to do the will of the senses. The next two cantos Kalidasa seems to difference perhaps amounts to no lose hold of the subject; the touches more than a lesser or greater force of natural description cease or are, of vitality, but it is for the purposes with a few exceptions, perfunctory of poetry a real and important and even conventional, and the difference. The spirit of delightful full force of his genius is thrown inweakness swooning with excessive to a series of extraordinary pictures. beauty gives a peculiar charm of as vivid as if actually executed in soft laxness to poems like the Endy- line and colour, of feminine beauty mion, but it is a weakening charm and sensuous passion. The two to which no virile temperament elements, never properly fused,cease will trust itself. The poetry even to stand side by side. For of Kalidasa satisfies the sensuous all description of the winter we have imagination without enervat- a few stanzas describing the cold ing the virile chords of and the appearance of fields, plants,
