THE SPRING with its leaves and flowers has come into my body.
The bees hum there the morning long, and the winds idly play with the shadows.
A sweet fountain springs up from the heart of my heart.
My eyes are washed with delight like the dew-bathed morning, and life is quivering in all my limbs like the sounding strings-of the lute.
Are you wandering alone by the shore of my life, where the tide is in flood, 0 lover of my endless days?
Are my dreams flitting round you like the moths with their many-
coloured wings?
And are those your songs that are echoing in the dark caves of my being?
Who but you can hear the hum of the crowded hours that sounds in my veins to-day, the glad steps that dance in my breast, the clamour of the restless life beating its wings in my body?

WHEN I BRING you coloured toys, my child, I understand why there is such a play of colours on clouds, on water, and why flowers are painted in tints-when I give coloured toys to you, my child.
When I sing to make you dance, I truly know why there is music in leaves, and why waves send their chorus of voices to the heart of the listening earth-when I sing to make you dance.
When I bring sweet things to your greedy hands, I know why there is honey in the cup of the flower, and why fruits are secretly filled with sweet juice-when I bring sweet things to your greedy hands.
When I kiss your face to make you smile, my darling, I surely understand what pleasure streams from the sky in morning light, and what delight the summer breeze brings to my body-when I kiss you to make you smile.

O MY CHILD, my infant Shiva,
self-forgetful,
at every step of thy wild dance things totter and tumble,
thy gatherings are scattered,
and a whirlwind of destruction
spreads the dust of thy trampled toys in the sky.
From desolation to desolation
thy world finds its release;
the stream of thy play ever flows
through the burst bond of thy playthings;
revelling in penury
thou buildest thy creation with trifles,
in the next moment to forget it
for a mere caprice;
with the sky for thy robe,
all covers thou flingest away from thy limbs.
With thy riches hidden in thy being
thou dwellest in a world bare of all shame and show
and thought for self,
in a destitution that never makes thee poor,
and the dust that soils not thy purity,
the sweep of thine own dance
ever wiping thee white.
O Shiva, the Child,
know me for thy lover,
thy disciple in dancing,
teach me the wisdom of unconcern,
the game of breaking of toys,
teach me how to guide my steps
to the time of thy footfalls,
how to move free by rending the webs
of one's own weaving.