MY SONG HAS put off her adornments. She has no pride of dress and decoration. Ornaments would mar our union; they would come between thee and me; their jingling would drown thy whispers. My poet's vanity dies in shame before thy sight. O master poet, I have sat down at thy feet. Only let me make my life simple and straight, like a flute of reed for thee to fill with music.
YOU ASK ME, mother, where I most wish to go. It is there from where I first came to you. But I never can remember the place. My father smiles at my trouble and says. 'It is beyond the clouds in the land of the evening star.' But I hear from you, it is deep in the bosom of the earth, from where the flowers come away seeking the sun. 'That land lies unseen,' my auntie says, 'in the bottom of the sea, hiding all the precious gems in its store.' My brother pulls my hair and says, 'How can you find it, you stupid one, for it is mingled in the air.' It must be everywhere, it seems to me when I listen to you all. Only my school-master shakes his head and says'It is nowhere.'
