smell of the wet earth in the rain rises like a great chant of praise from the voiceless multitude of the insignificant.
312
That love can ever lose is a fact that we cannot accept as truth.
313
We shall know some day that death can never rob us of that which our soul has gained, for her gains are one
314
God comes to me in the dusk of my evening with the flowers from my past kept fresh in his basket.
315
When all the strings of my life will be tuned, my Master, then at every touch of thine will come out the music of love.
316
Let me live truly, my Lord, so that death to me become true.
317
Man's history is waiting in patience for the triumph of the insulted man.
318
I fell thy gaze upon my heart this moment like the sunny silence of the morning upon the lonely field whose harvest is over.
319
I long for the Island of Songs across this heaving Sea of Shouts.
320
The prelude of the night is commenced in the music of the sunset, in its solemn hymn to the ineffable dark.
321
I have scaled the peak and found no shelter in fame's bleak and barren height. Lead me, my Guide, before the light fades, into the valley of quiet where life's harvest mellows into golden wisdom.
322
Things look phantastic in this dimness of the dusk—the spires whose bases are lost in the dark and tree tops like blots of ink. I shall wait for the morning and wake up to see thy city in the light.
323
I have suffered and despaired and known death and I am glad that I am in this great world.
324
There are tracts in my life that are bare and silent. They are the open spaces where my busy days had their light and air.
325
Release me from my unfulfilled past clinging to me from behind making death difficult.
326
Let this be my last word, that I trust in thy love.
LOVER'S GIFT AND CROSSING
LOVER’S GIFT
1
You allowed your kingly power to vanish, Shajahan, but your wish was to make imperishable a tear-drop of love.
Time has no pity for the human heart, he laughs at its sad struggle to remember.
You allured him with beauty, made him captive, and crowned the formless death with fadeless form.
The secret whispered in the hush of night to the ear of your love is wrought in the perpetual silence of stone.
Though empires crumble to dust, and centuries are lost in shadows, the marble still sighs to the stars, “I remember.”
“I remember.”—But life forgets, for she has her call to the Endless: and she goes on her voyage unburdened, leaving her memories to the forlorn forms of beauty.
2
Come to my garden walk, my love. Pass by the fervid flowers that press themselves on your sight. Pass them by, stopping at some chance joy, that like a sudden wonder of sunset illumines, yet eludes.
For love’s gift is shy, it never tells its name, it flits across the shade, spreading a shiver of joy along the dust. Overtake it or miss it for ever. But a gift that can be grasped is merely a frail flower, or a lamp with a flame that will flicker.
3
The fruits come in crowds into my orchard, they jostle each other. They surge up in the light in an anguish of fullness.
Proudly step into my orchard, my queen, sit there in the shade, pluck the ripe fruits from their stems, and let them yield, to the utmost, their burden of sweetness at your lips.
In my orchard the butterflies shake their wings in the sun, the leaves tremble, the fruits clamour to come to completion.
4
She is near to my heart as the meadow-flower to the earth; she is sweet to me as sleep is to tired limbs. My love for her is my life flowing in its fullness, like a river in autumn flood, running with serene abandonment.. My songs are one with my love, like the murmur of a stream, that sings with all its waves and currents.
5
I would ask for still more, if I had the sky with all its stars, and the world with its endless riches; but I would be content with the smallest corner of this earth if only she were mine.
6
In the light of this thriftless day of spring, my poet, sing of those who pass by and do not linger, who laugh as they run and never look back, who blossom in an hour of unreasoning delight, and fade in a moment without regret.
Do not sit down silently, to tell the beads of your past tears and smiles,—do not stop to pick up the dropped petals from the flowers of overnight, do not go to seek things that evade you, to know the meaning that is not plain,—leave the gaps in your life where they are, for the music to come out of their depths.
7
It is little that remains now, the rest was spent in one careless summer. It is
