The hours wait, the stars watch, the wind is still, the silence is heavy in my heart.
Wake, Love, wake! brim my empty cup, and with a breath of song ruffle the night.
Whence has he word of the morning before the morning breaks, and when the dragon night still holds the sky in its cold black coils?
Tell me, bird of the morning, how, through the twofold night of the sky and the leaves, he found his way into your dream, the messenger out of the east?
The world did not believe you when you cried, “The sun is on his way, the night is no more.”
Bare your forehead, waiting for the first blessing of light, and sing with the bird of the morning in glad faith.
The beggar in me lifted his lean hands to the starless sky and cried into night’s ear with his hungry voice.
His prayers were to the blind Darkness who lay like a fallen god in a desolate heaven of lost hopes.
The cry of desire eddied round a chasm of despair, a wailing bird circling its empty nest.
But when morning dropped anchor at the rim of the East, the beggar in me leapt and cried:
“Blessed am I that the deaf night denied me—that its coffer was empty.”
He cried, “O Life, O Light, you are precious! and precious is the joy that at last has known you!”
Sanātan was telling his beads by the Ganges when a Brahmin in rags came to him and said, “Help me, I am poor!”
“My alms-bowl is all that is my own,” said Sanātan, “I have given away everything I had.”
“But my lord Shiva came to me in my dreams,” said the Brahmin, “and counselled me to come to you.”
Sanātan suddenly remembered he had picked up a stone without price among the pebbles on the river-bank, and thinking that some one might need it hid it in the sands.
He pointed out the spot to the Brahmin, who wondering dug up the stone.
The Brahmin sat on the earth and mused alone till the sun went down behind the trees, and cowherds went home with their cattle.
Then he rose and came slowly to Sanātan and said, “Master, give me the least fraction of the wealth that disdains all the wealth of the world.”
And he threw the precious stone into the water.
Time after time I came to your gate with raised hands, asking for more and yet more.
You gave and gave, now in slow measure, now in sudden excess.