BONDS? INDEED they are bonds, this love and this hope in our hearts. They are as mother's arms pressing the child to the warmth of her bosom. Thirst? Yes, it is the thirst which leads life to each source of its joy in the breasts of the eternal mother. Who would take from the child this thirst of his growing life and break through the bonds of the mother's encircling arms?
SHE WENT away when the night was about to wane. My mind tried to console me by saying, 'All is vanity.' I felt angry and said, 'That unopened letter with her name on it, and this palm-leaf fan bordered with red silk by her own hands, are they not real?' The day passed, and my friend came and said to me, 'Whatever is good is true, and can never perish.' 'How do you know?' I asked impatiently; 'was not this body good which is now lost to the world?' As a fretful child hurting its own mother, I tried to wreck all the shelters that ever I had, in and about me, and cried, 'This world is treacherous.' Suddenly I felt a voice saying-'Ungrateful!' I looked out of the window, and a reproach seemed to come from the star-sprinkled night,-'You pour out into the void of my absence your faith in the truth that I came!'