As I hummed the tune I wrote the first line of the song—"I know thee, thou Stranger"—and if there were no tune to it I don't know what meaning would be left in the song. But by the power of the spell (Mantra) of the tune the mysterious figure of that stranger was evoked in my mind. My heart began to say, "There is a stranger going to and fro in this world of ours—her house is on the further shores of an ocean of mystery—Sometimes she is to be seen in the Autumn morning, sometimes in the flowery midnight—Sometimes we receive an intimation of her in the depths of our heart—Sometimes I hear her voice when I turn my ear to the sky." The tune of my song led me to the very door of that stranger who ensnares the universe and appears in it, and I said:
Wandering over the world,
I come to thy land:
I am a guest at thy door, thou Stranger.
Some days afterwards I heard some one singing along the road:
How does that unknown bird fly to and from the cage?
Could I but catch it, I would put the chain of my thoughts
round its feet.
I saw that the Baul song said the same thing. At times the strange bird comes to the closed cage, and speaks a word of the limitless and the unknown. What but the tune of a song could express the coming and going of the strange bird?
These passages from the confession-book of the lyrist are very suggestive, when one can
