পারস্য-যাত্রী
Because they have some quality of harmony which we call beauty, which makes their reality impressively inevitable and immediate to our minds. We take joy in the springtime blossoming of new life not for any virtue which we know as usefulness but simply because through a fulness of reality it rouses response of reality within us. It delights us by the sheer fact of its existence which is co-extensive with ours.
I had some knowledge of Persia even before my coming. I had read something of your history and geography, and formed some idea of your people and your country. My imagination was aroused through your great poets whose call had come to me even though I had no direct access to them. I used to dream of a Persia where bulbuls made love to the roses, where in dreamland gardens poets sat round their wine cups and invoked visions of ineffable meaning. But now that I have come to your country my dream has been formed into a concrete image finding its permanent place in the inner chamber of my experience. It is a definite gain added to the store of all my things of beauty that are joy for ever. I have visited Saadi’s tomb; I have sat beside the resting place of Hafiz and intimately felt his touch in the glimmering green of your woodlands, in blossoming roses. The morning sun coming through the iron lattice work wrote its shadow scripts over his tomb; it was the same sun that lighted up the face of his beloved centuries ago. It fell upon my forehead with the memory of an eternal love episode in which we all seemed to have taken part. The past age of Persia lent the old world perfume of its own sunny hours of spring to the morning of that day and the silent voice of your ancient poet filled the silence in the heart of the poet of Modern India. Altogether it was an image which waited for its perfection in my mind since the far-
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