THE CURRENT in which I drifted ran rapid and strong when I was young. The spring breeze was spendthrift of itself, the trees were on fire with flowers; and the birds never slept from singing. I sailed with giddy speed, carried away by the flood of passion; I had no time to see and feel and take the world into my being. Now that youth has ebbed and I am stranded on the bank, I can hear the deep music of all things, and the sky opens to me its heart of stars.
THE EVENING stood bewildered among street lamps, its gold tarnished by the city dust. A woman, gaudily decked and painted, leant over the rail of her balcony, a living fire waiting for its moths. Suddenly an eddy was formed in the road round a street-boy crushed under the wheels of a carriage, and the woman on the balcony fell to the floor screaming in agony, stricken with the grief of the great white-robed Mother who sits in the world's inner shrine.