THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE

260The Harmony of Virtuein any other master of classical verse. Bhavabhuti's manner isbold, strenuous, external; Jayadeva's music is based palpably uponassonance and alliteration which he uses with extraordinary brillianceand builds into the most enchanting melodies, but withoutdelicacy, restraint or disguise. If there were any real cause fordoubt of the authorship, the verse would clearly vindicate theSeasons for Kalidasa.Such is this remarkable poem which some, led away by itsundoubted splendours, have put in the first rank of Kalidasa'swork. Its artistic defects and its comparative crudity forbid usto follow them. It is uncertain in plan, ill-fused, sometimes rawin its imagery, unequal in its execution. But for all that, it musthave come upon its contemporaries like the dawning of a newsun in the skies. Its splendid diction and versification, its vigour,fire and force, its sweetness of spirit and its general promise andto some extent actual presentation of a first-rate poetic geniusmust have made it a literary event of the first importance. Especiallyit is significant in its daring gift of sensuousness. The prophetof a hedonistic civilisation here seizes with no uncertain hand onthe materials of his work. A vivid and virile interpretation of senselifein Nature, a similar interpretation of all elements of humanlife capable of greatness of beauty, seen under the light of thesenses and expressed in the terms of an aesthetic appreciation,— this is the spirit of Kalidasa's first work as it is of his last. Atpresent he is concerned only with the outward body of Nature,the physical aspects of things, the vital pleasures and emotions,the joy and beauty of the human body; but it is the first necessarystep on the long road of sensuous and poetic experienceand expression he has to travel before he reaches his goal in hiscrowning work, the Birth of the War-God, in which he takes upfor treatment one of the supreme fables of the life of the Godsand the Cosmos and in its handling combines sublimity with grace,height of speech with fullness and beautiful harmony of sound,boldness of descriptive line with magnificence of sensuous colourin a degree of perfection never before or afterwards surpassedor even equalled in poetic literature.