THIS AUTUMN morning is tired with excess of light, and if your songs grow fitful and languid give me your flute awhile. I shall but play with it as the whim takes me,-now take it on my lap, now touch it with my lips, now keep it by my side on the grass. But in the solemn evening stillness I shall gather flowers, to deck it with wreaths, I shall fill it with fragrance; I shall worship it with the lighted lamp. Then at night I shall come to you and give you back your flute. You will play on it the music of midnight when the lonely crescent moon wanders among the stars.
ONCE AGAIN I wake up when the night has waned, when the world opens all its petals once more, and this is an endless wonder. Vast islands have sunk in the abyss unnamed, stars have been beggared of the last flicker of their light, countless epochs have lost all their ladings. World-conquerors have vanished into the shadow of a name behind dim legends, great nations raised their towers of triumph as a mere offering to the unappeasable hunger of the dust. Among this dissolving crowd of the discarded my forehead receives the consecration of light, and this is an endless wonder. I stand for another day with the Himalayas, with constellations of stars. I am here where in the surging sea-waves the infuriate dance of the Terrible is rhythmed with his boisterous laughter. The centuries on which have flashed up and foundered kingly crowns like bubbles have left their signature on the bark of this aged tree, where I am allowed to sit under its ancient shade for one more day, and this is an endless wonder.
