CHAPTER VI
THE BABE'S PARADISE
Besides, the childhood of the day has kept,
Against you come, some Orient pearls unwept.
The imagination of the poet is very near the child's. In the Indian Vaishnava song, which is not meant for children at all, you often find touches of their fantasy, recalling the way in which they surprise the young god in their midst, or find the wonder of the world in the dust at their feet. Such is the cry of the shepherd-boys in one song, often quoted, who find they have been playing with Krishna and treating him as a common school-fellow:
"Why, think how often we quarrelled with you and called you names; how often we rode on your shoulders, and you on ours; how often we ate up the best pieces and only gave you the crumbs! Did you take these things to heart then and run away?"
You have only to reverse the magic lens in order that the grown-up man or woman may look at the child with the same wonder and sense of new discovery. Its ways are at once
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