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In these lines, the speaker has referred to his Beloved for the first time
as a cowherd boy, thus identifying him specifically with Krishna and at the
same time avoiding the obligation to name him directly From his secret vantage
point, he speaker observes his Beloved disappear into the twilight in self-absorbed
ecstasy, his face illuminated by that mysterious "sweet and serene" smile.
The herds follow and the scene closes.
Although it has taken but an instant for this scene to be enacted, the poet
has entered into the very heart of the dramatic movement. He has not chosen
one of the classical episodes of Krishna's life as his theme but he has chosen
one which, perhaps because of its quietness, its freedom from pre-determined
outcome, the reader can easily penetrate. His technique of observing the Beloved
from a hiding place is one of the dramatist's most effective tools for heightening
the intensity of the action. If the poem is dramatic, however, it is a drama
that is enacted in silence, for there is no point of contact between the
lover and his Beloved. In the poet's frustration of our dramatic expectations,
he is able to imbue the figure of Krishna with the subtle evanescence of
one whose actions and responses have transcended the temporal world of the
speaker. Even the herds possess this remoteness or other-worldliness.
The true drama of the poem may be identified as the inner drama of the speaker.
The love that he bears for the Beloved, and which may be detected throughout
the poem in his fond descriptions of my cowherd boy, my sweet Lord, and so
on, is a love that has been sublimated. That this divine love still contains
a measure of earthly love is hinted at when the speaker seems to contemplate
the possibility of the Beloved seeing him. This trace of human desire for
love's return endears us to the speaker and gives him the ring of a living
person. In him the poet captures the frailty of human love and the inner strength
that ultimately transforms such love into unconditional self-offering.
In this and in other songs by Sri Chinmoy that are drawn from the pad tradition
it is apparent that the poet refrains from dwelling upon details for the sheer
sake of introducing natural phenomena. Detail is functional, not ornamental.
Many critics have agreed that "excessive description is often fatal to mystical
writing."[82] Under the poet's rigorous selectivity the pad form is chastened,
shook free from its tendency to exotic imagery and infused with intensity
and immediacy. Paradise itself becomes a state of ecstasy that is almost wholly
interiorised:
