earth's sacrifical fireflames up in her trees,
scattering sparks in flowers.
Forests, the clouds of earth,
hold their silence up to the sky ,
and clouds from above come down
in resonant showers.
The world speaks to me in pictures,
my soul answers in music.
The sky tells its beads all night
on the countless stars
in memory of the sun.
The darkness of night, like pain, is dumb,
the darkness of dawn, like peace, is silent.
Pride engraves his frowns in stones,
love offers her surrender in flowers.
The obsequious brush curtails truth
in difference to the canvas which is narrow.
The hill in its longing for the far-away sky
wishes to be like the cloud
with its endless urge of seeking.
To justify their own spilling of ink
they spell the day as night.
Profit smiles on goodness
when the good is profitable.
In its swelling pride
the bubble doubts the truth of the sea,
and laughs and bursts into emptiness.
Love is an endless mystery,
for it has nothing else to explain it.
My clouds, sorrowing in the dark,
forget that they themselves
have hidden the sun.
Man discovers his own wealth
when God comes to ask gifts of him.
You leave your memory as a flame
to my lonely lamp of separation.
I came to offer thee a flower,
but thou must have all my garden,—
It is thine.
The picture—a memory of light
treasured by the shadow.
It is easy to make faces at the sun,
He is exposed by his own light in all
directions.
Love remains a secret even when spoken,
for only a lover truly knows that he is loved.
History slowly smothers its truth,
but hastily struggles to revive it
in the terrible penance of pain.
My work is rewarded in daily wages,
I wait for my final value in love.
Beauty knows to say, "Enough,"
barbarism clamours for still more.
God loves to see in me, not his servant,
but himself who serves all.
The darkness of night is in harmony with day,
the morning of mist is discordant.
In the bounteous time of roses love is wine,—
it is food in the famished hour
when their petals are shed.
An unknown flower in a strange land
speaks to the poet:
"Are we not of the same soil, my love?"
I am able to love my God
because He gives me freedom to deny Him.
My untuned strings beg for music
in their anguished cry of shame.
The worm thinks it strange and foolish
that man does not eat his books.
The clouded sky to-day bears the vision
of the shadow of a divine sadness
on the forehead of brooding eternity.
The shade of my tree is for passers-by,
its fruit for the one for whom I wait.
Flushed with the glow of sunset
earth seems like a ripe fruit
ready to be harvested by night.
Light accepts darkness for his spouse
for the sake of creation.
The reed waits for his master's breath,
the Master goes seeking for his reed.
To the blind pen the hand that writes is unreal,
its writing unmeaning.
The sea smites his own barren breast
because he has no flowers to offer to the moon.
The greed for fruit misses the flower.
God in His temple of stars
waits for man to bring him his lamp.
The fire restrained in the tree fashions flowers.
Released from bonds, the shameless flame
dies in barren ashes.
The sky sets no snare to capture the moon,
it is her own freedom which binds her.
The light that fills the sky
seeks its limit in a dew-drop on the grass.
Wealth is the burden of bigness,
Welfare the
