Sudās looked in his face and put the lotus at his feet and bowed his head to the dust.
Buddha smiled and asked, “What is your wish, my son?”
Sudās cried, “The least touch of your feet.”
There are some who have sat speechless for ages in thy shadow; let me utter their songs.
Take me up on thy chariot without wheels, running noiselessly from world to world, thou queen in the palace of time, thou darkly beautiful!
Many a questioning mind has stealthily entered thy courtyard and roamed through thy lampless house seeking for answers.
From many a heart, pierced with the arrow of joy from the hands of the Unknown, have burst forth glad chants, shaking the darkness to its foundation.
Those wakeful souls gaze in the starlight in wonder at the treasure they have suddenly found.
Make me their poet, O Night, the poet of thy fathomless silence.
I will meet one day the Life within me, the joy that hides in my life, though the days perplex my path with their idle dust.
I have known it in glimpses, and its fitful breath has come upon me, making my thoughts fragrant for a while.
I will meet one day the Joy without me that dwells behind the screen of light—and will stand in the overflowing solitude where all things are seen as by their creator.
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.
The poet’s mind floats and dances on the waves of life amidst the voices of wind and water.
Now when the sun has set and the darkened sky draws upon the sea like drooping lashes upon a weary eye it is time to take away his pen, and let his thoughts sink into the bottom of the deep amid the eternal secret of that silence.
The night is dark and your slumber is deep in the hush of my being.
Wake, O Pain of Love, for I know not how to open the door, and I stand outside.