The Bengali Book of English Verse/The Quest (Prafulla Ranjan Das)
The Quest.
I stepped into the dusty thoroughfare,
Where men with weary footsteps trod the earth,
And sought the secrets of their death and birth
In heat and passion of the noon-day air!
—In life that has been lived in black despair,
Or in the splendour of the city's worth,
Where mortals moving with no joy or mirth
Have yet aspired to do, conceive, and dare!
And one above them all cried out to me,
"Alas, alas,—I gave a life's devotion,
To drag the secrets of Eternity
From objects whirling with the earth's swift motion,
And now I think I'll wander never more,
What, if those secrets waited at my door?"