“I have no joy in conquest,” she cried, the woman in sorrow.
She only said, “I wait for him of the unknown name.”
Days pass by and she cries, “When will my beloved come whom I know not, and be known to me for ever?”
Yours is the light that breaks forth from the dark, and the good that sprouts from the cleft heart of strife.
Yours is the house that opens upon the world, and the love that calls to the battlefield.
Yours is the gift that still is a gain when everything is a loss, and the life that flows through the caverns of death.
Yours is the heaven that lies in the common dust, and you are there for me, you are there for all.
When the weariness of the road is upon me, and the thirst of the sultry day; when the ghostly hours of the dusk throw their shadows across my life, then I cry not for your voice only, my friend, but for your touch.
There is an anguish in my heart for the burden of its riches not given to you.
Put out your hand through the night, let me hold it and fill it and keep it; let me feel its touch along the lengthening stretch of my loneliness.
The odour cries in the bud, “Ah me, the day departs, the happy day of spring, and I am a prisoner in petals!”
Do not lose heart, timid thing! Your bonds will burst, the bud will open into flower, and when you die in the fulness of life, even then the spring will live on.
The odour pants and flutters within the bud, crying, “Ah me, the hours pass by, yet I do not know where I go, or what it is I seek!”
Do not lose heart, timid thing! The spring breeze has overheard your desire, the day will not end before you have fulfilled your being.
Dark is the future to her, and the odour cries in despair, “Ah me, through whose fault is my life so unmeaning?
“Who can tell me, why I am at all?” Do not lose heart, timid thing! The perfect dawn is near when you will mingle your life with all life and know at last your purpose.
She runs about your palace and plays, and tries to make of you a plaything as well.
She heeds not when her hair tumbles down and her careless garment drags in the dust.
She falls asleep when you speak to her and answers not—and the flower you give her in the morning slips to the dust from her hands.
When the storm bursts and darkness is over the sky she is sleepless; her dolls lie scattered on the earth and she clings to you in terror.