“The days pass,” Love said, “but I wait for you.”
Death said, “I ply the boat of your life across the sea.”
Tulsidas, the poet, was wandering, deep in thought, by the Ganges, in that lonely spot where they burn their dead.
He found a woman sitting at the feet of the corpse of her dead husband, gaily dressed as for a wedding.
She rose as she saw him, bowed to him, and said, “Permit me, Master, with your blessing, to follow my husband to heaven.”
“Why such hurry, my daughter?” asked Tulsidas. “Is not this earth also His who made heaven?”
“For heaven I do not long,” said the woman. “I want my husband.”
Tulsidas smiled and said to her, “Go back to your home, my child. Before the month is over you will find your husband.”
The woman went back with glad hope. Tulsidas came to her every day and gave her high thoughts to think, till her heart was filled to the brim with divine love.
When the month was scarcely over, her neighbours came to her, asking, “Woman, have you found your husband?”
“In my heart is my lord, one with me,” said the woman.
You came for a moment to my side and touched me with the great mystery of the woman that there is in the heart of creation.
She who is ever returning to God his own outflo wing of sweetness; she is the ever fresh beauty and youth in nature; she dances in the bubbling streams and sings in the morning light; she with heaving waves suckles the thirsty earth; in her the Eternal One breaks in two in a joy that no longer may contain itself, and overflows in the pain of love.
Who is she who dwells in my heart, the woman forlorn for ever?
I wooed her and I failed to win her. I decked her with wreaths and sang in her praise.
A smile shone in her face for a moment, then it faded.
“I have no joy in thee,” she cried, the woman in sorrow.
I bought her jewelled anklets and fanned her with a fan gem-studded; I made her a bed on a bedstead of gold.
There flickered a gleam of gladness in her eyes, then it died.
“I have no joy in these,” she cried, the woman in sorrow.
I seated her upon a car of triumph and drove her from end to end of the earth.
Conquered hearts bowed down at her feet, and shouts of applause rang in the sky.
Pride shone in her eyes for a moment, then it was dimmed in tears.