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If I were living in the royal town of Ujjain, when Kalidas was the king's
poet, I should know some Malwa girl and fill my thoughts with the music of
her name. She would glance at me through the slanting shadow of her
eyelids, and allow her veil to catch in the jasmine as an excuse for
lingering near me.
This very thing happened in some past whose track is lost under time's dead
leaves.
The scholars fight to-day about dates that play hide-and-seek.
I do not break my heart dreaming over flown and vanished ages: but alas and
alas again, that those Malwa girls have followed them!
To what heaven, I wonder, have they carried in their flower-baskets those
days that tingled to the lyrics of the king's poet?
This morning, separation from those whom I was born too late to meet weighs
on and saddens my heart.
Yet April carries the same flowers with which they decked their hair, and
the same south breeze fluttered their veils as whispers over modern roses.
And, to tell the truth, joys are not lacking to this spring, though Kalidas
sing no more; and I know, if he can watch me from the Poets' Paradise, he
has reasons to be envious.
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