THE BEGINNING.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11026, 14 March 1914, Page 6

THE BEGINNING.

" Where have I come from, where die you pick me up?" the baby aSkec its mother. She answered, half crying, lialf laughing, and clasping the baby to hoi breast— ' _ "You were hidden in my heart as it: desire, my darling. You were in the dolls of my childhood's games; and when with clay I mad< the image of my- god every morning, I made and unmade you then You were enshrined with our hou6eholc deity, in his worship I worshipped you. In all my hopes and my loves, in raj life, ill the life of my mother you have lived. In the lap of the deathless Spirit who rules our home you have been nursed for ages. When in girlhood my heart was opening its petals, you liovered as a fragrance about it. Your tender softness bloomed in my youthful limbSj like a glow in the sky before the sunrise. Heaven's first darling, twin-born with the morning light, you have floated down the stream of the world's life, and at last you have stranded on my heart. As I gaze on your face, mystery overwhelms me; you who belong to all have become mine. For fear of losing youl hold you tight to my breast. What magic lias snared the world's treasure in these slender arms of mine?" Rabindranath Tagore, in " The Crescent Moon " (Macmillan).