knowledge are (in Ernest Raymond’s words) eternal Wisdom,
temporal Vision, healing touch and poignant humour. It is surely
significant that the superlatively gifted ones of the BHAGAVATA-
apila, Dhruva, Prahlad, Vamana, Gokula Krishna-are all boys five
years of age (or not much older), yet sovereign in their
understanding. “Heaven lies about us in our infancy”, says
wordsworth, and addresses a child as “mighty seer, prophet
blest”. And there is a good deal of truth in all this, and hence it
asks for a special gift of percipience and directness of utterance
to rise high enough in the spiral of consciousness to reach the
child’s native altitudes of comprehension. The child CAN vision
infinity in a grain of sand, the Apocalypse in a familiar toy, and
omnipresent Reality in seeming make-believe.

The child’s ‘intimations of immortality’ and clairvoyant gifts
add up sometimes to the kind of illumination that is the settled
wisdom of saints like Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, and what is
important in children’s songs is the use of everyday langauge to
serve as the ‘Open Sesame’ leading the child to explore on his
own the interior countries of the Spirit. Aids like assonance,
alliteration, initial and terminal rhyme, bold metaphor, suggestive
imagery, repetition and refrain, all can come handy, but the secret
of secrets is the power of the song to reach the deeper listening
of the child’s soul. A fair example is the title-piece, ‘Smiling
Flowers’: