BY A. JANAKI RAM

In a lone valley within the hills, where a crystal rivulet takes its birth, I built myself a marble temple, with a marble dome and a marble Shrine.

Within the Shrine, thro' many a day of fasting and of prayer, with my own hands I shaped the form of a marble deity rising from a marble Lotus flower.

Each morn as daylight steeped my Shrine, with roses and Jasmines and golden sunflowers too, I worshipped this sacred idol mine.

At eventide, as the first stars peeped, with festoons of oil-lamps all alit, and sweet incense burning, in praise of my deity I raised aloud my adoring voice in the Wild.

And, all day long, I sat at the Lotus feet, to fill many yellow palm leaves with songs that came to me of the Image thus enthroned within my Shrine.

One day, it chanced, She, walking in the morn, some strange force her footsteps to my temple guided, and all too suddenly for me, She was at the Shrine.

Thus surprised, the morning psalm of worship stopped within my heart, and the worshipping flowers failed to fall, transfixed as I stood before that Goddess mine.

She saw–what I could not hide, in the immobile Image, a marvelous replica of her own chaste angelic form, with brow, and eyes and lips all eloquent of the glorious Soul She herself held within. . . .

The flowers at my altar too, She saw, were her own favourites, which when hand in hand thro' hill and dale we wandered, into loving garlands I had woven, to grace her neck or wind around her wrists.

In the palm-leaf-book, She found songs that told of all the tender words, into her willing ears I had poured during many a twilight tryst. . . .

And, in the mosaic of the ceiling, and on the floor, tho' cunningly in wrought, only too clear for her eyes, She recognised the Lotus that was symbol of her own sweet name. . . .

Then half in wonder, half in joy, one hand imperiously held towards that marble figure to the dumbfounded devotee, she spake: "Is This your Deity?"

Ashamed, I hung my head, and on bended knee, the hem of her garment I kissed, . . . and, once more, worship reigned within my Marble Shrine.