FIERCELY THEY rend in pieces the carpet woven during ages of prayer for the welcome of the world's best hope.
        The great preparations of love lie a heap of shreds, and there is nothing on the ruined altar to remind the mad crowd that their god was to have come. In a fury of passion they seem to have burnt their future to cinders, and with it the season of their bloom.
        The air is harsh with the cry, 'Victory to the Brute!' The children look haggard and aged; they whisper to one another that time revolves but never advances, that we are goaded to run but have nothing to reach, that creation is like a blind man's groping.
        I said to myself, 'Cease thy singing. Song is for one who is to come, the struggle without an end is for things that are.'
        The road, that ever lies along like some one with ear to the ground listening for footsteps, to-day gleans no hint of coming guest, nothing of the house at its far end.
        My lute said, 'Trample me in the dust.'
        I looked at the dust by the roadside. There was a tiny flower among thorns. And I cried, 'The world's hope is not dead!'
        The sky stooped over the horizon to whisper to the earth, and a hush of expectation filled the air. I saw the palm leaves clapping their hands to the beat of inaudible music, and the moon exchanged glances with the glistening silence of the lake.
        The road said to me, 'Fear nothing!' and my lute said, 'Lend me thy songs!'

MY HEART, like a peacock on a rainy day,
spreads its plumes tinged with rapturous colours of thoughts,
and in its ecstasy seeks some vision in the sky,
with a longing for one whom it does not know.
My heart dances.
The clouds rumble from sky to sky
the shower sweeps horizons,
the doves shiver in silence in their nests,
the frogs croak in the flooded fields,
and the clouds rumble.
O who is she on the king's tower
that has loosened the braid of her dark hair,
has drawn over her breasts the blue veil?
She wildly starts and runs in the sudden flashes of lightning
and lets the dark hair dance on her bosom.
Ah my heart dances like a peacock,
the rain patters on the new leaves of summer,
the tremor of the crickets' chirp troubles the shade of the tree,
the river overflows its bank washing the village meadows.
My heart dances.

DARKNESS is the veiled bride
silently waiting for the errant light
to return to her bosom.