THE NAME SHE called me by, like a flourishing jasmine, covered the whole seventeen years of our love. With its sound mingled the quiver of the light through the leaves, the scent of the grass in the rainy night, and the sad silence of the last hour of many an idle day. Not the work of God alone was he who answered to that name; she created him again for herself during those seventeen swift years. Other years were to follow, but their vagrant days, no longer gathered within the fold of that name uttered in her voice, stray and are scattered. They ask me, 'Who should fold us?' I find no answer and sit silent, and they cry to me while dispersing, 'We seek a shepherdess!' Whom should they seek? That they do not know. And like derelict evening clouds they drift in the trackless dark, and are lost and forgotten.
আবার আমার হাতে বীণা দাও তুলি, আবার আসুক ফিরে হারা গানগুলি। সহসা কঠিন শীতে মানসের জলে পদ্মবন মরে যায়, হংস দলে দলে সারি বেঁধে উড়ে যায় সুদূর দক্ষিণে জনহীন কাশফুল্ল নদীর পুলিনে; আবার বসন্তে তারা ফিরে আসে যথা বহি লয়ে আনন্দের কলমুখরতা-- তেমনি আমার যত উড়ে-যাওয়া গান আবার আসুক ফিরে, মৌন এ পরান ভরি উতরোলে; তারা শুনাক এবার সমুদ্রতীরের তান, অজ্ঞাত রাজার অগম্য রাজ্যের যত অপরূপ কথা, সীমাশূন্য নির্জনের অপূর্ব বারতা।
IS SUMMER'S festival only for fresh blossoms and not also for withered leaves and faded flowers? Is the song of the sea in tune only with the rising waves? Does it not also sing with the waves that fall? Jewels are woven into the carpet where stands my king, but there are patient clods waiting to be touched by his feet. Few are the wise and the great who sit by my Master, but he has taken the foolish in his arms and made me his servant for ever.
