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قراءة كتاب Chitra, a Play in One Act
تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"
last words as I walked home pricked my
ears like red hot needles. "I have taken the vow of celibacy. I
am not fit to be thy husband!" Oh, the vow of a man! Surely
thou knowest, thou god of love, that unnumbered saints and sages
have surrendered the merits of their life-long penance at the
feet of a woman. I broke my bow in two and burnt my arrows in
the fire. I hated my strong, lithe arm, scored by drawing the
bowstring. O Love, god Love, thou hast laid low in the dust the
vain pride of my manlike strength; and all my man's training lies
crushed under thy feet. Now teach me thy lessons; give me the
power of the weak and the weapon of the unarmed hand.
I will be thy friend. I will bring the world-conquering Arjuna a
captive before thee, to accept his rebellion's sentence at thy
hand.
Had I but the time needed, I could win his heart by slow degrees,
and ask no help of the gods. I would stand by his side as a
comrade, drive the fierce horses of his war-chariot, attend him
in the pleasures of the chase, keep guard at night at the
entrance of his tent, and help him in all the great duties of a
Kshatriya, rescuing the weak, and meting out justice where it is
due. Surely at last the day would have come for him to look at
me and wonder, "What boy is this? Has one of my slaves in a
former life followed me like my good deeds into this?" I am not
the woman who nourishes her despair in lonely silence, feeding it
with nightly tears and covering it with the daily patient smile,
a widow from her birth. The flower of my desire shall never drop
into the dust before it has ripened to fruit. But it is the
labour of a life time to make one's true self known and honoured.
Therefore I have come to thy door, thou world-vanquishing Love,
and thou, Vasanta, youthful Lord of the Seasons, take from
my young body this primal injustice, an unattractive plainness.
For a single day make me superbly beautiful, even as beautiful as
was the sudden blooming of love in my heart. Give me but one
brief day of perfect beauty, and I will answer for the days that
follow.
Lady, I grant thy prayer.
Not for the short span of a day, but for one whole year the charm
of spring blossoms shall nestle round thy limbs.
SCENE II
WAS I dreaming or was what I saw by the lake truly there?
Sitting on the mossy turf, I mused over bygone years in the
sloping shadows of the evening, when slowly there came out from
the folding darkness of foliage an apparition of beauty in the
perfect form of a woman, and stood on a white slab of stone at
the water's brink. It seemed that the heart of the earth must
heave in joy under her bare white feet. Methought the vague
veilings of her body should melt in ecstasy into