THE BEGGAR IN me lifted his lean hands to the starless sky and cried into night's ear with his hungry voice.

His prayers were to the blind Darkness who lay like a fallen god in a desolate heaven of lost hopes.

The cry of desire eddied round a chasm of despair, a wailing bird

circling its empty nest.

But when morning dropped anchor at the rim of the East, the beggar m me leapt and cried:

'Blessed am I that the deaf night denied me-that its coffer was empty.'

He cried, 'O Life, O Light, you are precious! and precious is the joy that at last has known you!'