Aye, it is of your Home that I will sing— the unknown pole to which the magnet of your soul eternally trembles. Home is ever sweet —Home, Sweet Home! But this your sweet earthly home is only the home of your earthly self, the brick-and-mortar closet of your fleshly coats, of which you have possessed a countless number. But all those coats have been mere coverings of your inner Self, which is a truant from its own Home, but of which d has lost all memory, having lived so long in others' homes. I will sing to you of a song whose burden will remind you of this lost and forgotten Home, the Home that you are seeking in vain, consciously or unconsciously, the Home whose never-failing happiness you are trying to substitute in your borrowed home by ever-failing pleasures, pleasures which only pain you by their hollowness. How can you live upon a hollow happiness, you who have known and tasted solid, eternal happiness in your real Home?—the Home where light fades not, life grieves not, and happiness ever is! I will sing to you of the Home where your Master, Friend, Father, and Lover is ever anxious to get you back and take you to His bosom. I will sing to you of Krishna—your Home—the Seed and Soul of your soul, as well as of the universe of which you are a miniature. And now, my beloved friend, prepare yourself to listen to this song which comes to you from across the oceans—from a land where the altar of the Lord of Love is ever burning, fed by the libations of devotion and the incense of ecstasy, since the dawn of creation,—from that cradle of religion and civilization, from that spiritual metropolis of the spiritual world-empire, where the fountain of Divine Love, Life and Wisdom is still playing, to water the earth with the blessings of the soul—the Land of Bhārat, which you moderns call India. Listen and be blessed! This is a song not set to any tune you know, to any music you have heard, and yet it is a song which is set in the true tune of your heart, to the natural music of your soul. It is the Song Ecstatic of your Heart-Soul which will make the core of your being throb in beatitude and melt the crusts of materiality in you into the Love Unspeakable! Listen and be blessed! CHAPTER I. Weary and overburdened with its load of sorrow and weakness, the great heart of Mother Earth lifted her voice unto the heights of the skies, complaining. Her patience and faithfulness were qualities of wondrous worth to Brahmā, the Creator,[2] and so, drawing aside the curtain from his abode. He looked into her soft and wearied eyes, saying: "O Mother Earth! Long hath the pain of ingratitude and faithlessness pierced thy tender heart, and with courage and loving mercy hast thou borne its stings. But now a balm is to come unto thee and soothe thy wounded love and readjust those things of which thou dost complain.