Before this page is filled and I am called to the meeting, let me tell you it will not be necessary for you to come to Europe. For we shall not be long in Europe, and therefore the greater part of your travels will be over the seas. Wait for us in Santiniketan—and celebrate the prodigal’s return in a fit manner.
I feel frightened at the ‘Fuji’-tive mood that seems to have come over you. But my mouth is closed, for I have been playing the truant the last few months, as I have been doing the best part of my life. But what fatality is this which pursues me, that when I am ready to come back to take my part in the last scene of a happy comedy, you ring down the curtain and disappear! It seems that when I land in India, Pearson will remain on this side of the Atlantic and you on the other side of the Pacific; and the wind from the East and the wind from the West will both bring to my heart the wail of separation.
I think I had some kind of premonition in my mind and was trying to secure you for myself for the full festival of my home-coming by inviting you to join us in our tour. But we all have been entangled in the big enterprise of doing good to the world, which unfortunately has such a large area, that, in its field of duty, friends need the most powerful telescope to be distantly visible to one another.
I have often wondered in my mind whether my path is the path of the good. When I came to this world I had nothing but a reed given to me, which was to find its only value in producing music. I left my school, I neglected my work, but I had my reed and I played on it “in mere idle sport.” All along I had my one playmate, who also in his play produced music, among leaves, in rushing water, in silence of stars, in tears and laughter rippling into lights and shadows in the stream of human life. While my companion was this eternal Piper, this Spirit of play, I was nearest to the heart of the world, I knew its mother-tongue, and what I sang was caught up by the chorus of the wind and water and the dance-master of life.
But now came the school-master in the midst of my dream-world and I was foolish enough to accept his guidance. I laid aside my reed, I left my playground, where the Infinite Child is spending his eternity “in mere idle sport.” In a moment I became old and carried the burden of wisdom on my back, hawking truths from door to door. But have I been made to carry this burden, I ask myself over and over again, shouting myself hoarse in this noisy world where everybody is crying up his own wares? Pushing the wheelbarrows of propaganda from continent to continent—is this going to be the climax of a poet’s life? It seems to me like an evil dream, from which I occasionally wake up in the dead of night and grope about in the bed asking myself in consternation—“Where is my music?”
It is lost, but I had no right to lose it, for I did not earn it with the sweat of my brow; it was a gift to me, which I could deserve if I knew how to love it. You know I have said somewhere that “God praises me, when I do good; but God loves me, when I sing”. Praise is reward; it can be measured against the work you render; but love is above all rewards; it is measureless.
The poet who is true to his mission, reaps his harvest of love; but the poet, who strays into the path of the good, is dismissed with applause. So I am to found my International University—a great work! But I lose my little song—which loss can never be made up to me. How I wish I could find back my reed and be contemptuously ignored by the busy and the wise as a hopeless ne’er-do-well!
When I know for certain, that I shall never be able to go back to that sweet obscurity, which is the birthplace of flowers and bird-songs, I feel home-sick. It is a world which is so near and yet so far away; so easy of access and yet so immensely difficult. Happiness we go on missing in our life, because it is so simple.