Your songs, like birds from the lonely land of snow, are winging to build their nests in my heart against the warmth of its April, and I am content to wait for the merry season.
They knew the way and went to seek you along the narrow lane, but I wandered abroad into the night for I was ignorant.
I was not schooled enough to be afraid of you in the dark, therefore I came upon your doorstep unaware.
The wise rebuked me and bade me be gone, for I had not come by the lane.
I turned away in doubt, but you held me fast, and their scolding became louder every day.
I brought out my earthen lamp from my house and cried, “Come, children, I will light your path!”
The night was still dark when I returned, leaving the road to its silence, crying, “Light me, O Fire! for my earthen lamp lies broken in the dust!”
No: it is not yours to open buds into blossoms.
Shake the bud, strike it; it is beyond your power to make it blossom.
Your touch soils it, you tear its petals to pieces and strew them in the dust.
Ah! it is not for you to open the bud into a blossom.
He who can open the bud does it so simply.
He gives it a glance, and the life-sap stirs through its veins.
At his breath the flower spreads its wings and flutters in the wind.
Colours flush out like heart-longings, the perfume betrays a sweet secret.
He who can open the bud does it so simply.
Sudās, the gardener, plucked from his tank the last lotus left by the ravage of winter and went to sell it to the king at the palace gate.
There he met a traveller who said to him, “Ask your price for the last lotus,—I shall offer it to Lord Buddha.”
Sudās said, “If you pay one golden _māshā_ it will be yours.”
At that moment the king came out and he wished to buy the flower, for he was on his way to see Lord Buddha, and he thought, “It would be a fine thing to lay at his feet the lotus that bloomed in winter.”
When the gardener said he had been offered a golden _māshā_ the king offered him ten, but the traveller doubled the price.
The gardener, being greedy, imagined a greater gain from him for whose sake they were bidding. He bowed and said, “I cannot sell this lotus.”
In the hushed shade of the mango grove beyond the city wall Sudās stood before Lord Buddha, on whose lips sat the silence of love and whose eyes beamed peace like the morning star of the dew-washed autumn.