Then came an angry roar. Torn-off scraps of cloud hurried up from the
west, like panting messengers of evil tidings. Finally, lightning and
thunder, rain and storm, came on altogether and executed a mad dervish
dance. The bamboo clumps seemed to howl as the raging wind swept the
ground with them, now to the east, now to the west. Over all, the storm
droned like a giant snake-charmer's pipe, and to its rhythm swayed
hundreds and thousands of crested waves, like so many hooded snakes. The
thunder was incessant, as though a whole world was being pounded to pieces
away there behind the clouds.

With my chin resting on the ledge of an open window facing away from the
wind, I allowed my thoughts to take part in this terrible revelry; they
leapt into the open like a pack of schoolboys suddenly set free. When,
however, I got a thorough drenching from the spray of the rain, I had to
shut up the window and my poetising, and retire quietly into the darkness
inside, like a caged bird.




SHAZADPUR.

_June_ 1891.


From the bank to which the boat is tied a kind of scent rises out of the
grass, and the heat of the ground, given off in gasps, actually touches my
body. I feel that the warm, living Earth is breathing upon me, and that
she, also, must feel my breath.