The waning night lingers at my doors, let her take her leave in songs.
Pour your heart into my life strings, my Master, in tunes that descend from your stars.
In the lightning flash of a moment I have seen the immensity of your creation in my life—creation through many a death from world to world.
I weep at my unworthiness when I see my life in the hands of the unmeaning hours,—but when I see it in your hands I know it is too precious to be squandered among shadows.
I know that at the dim end of some day the sun will bid me its farewell.
Shepherds will play their pipes beneath the banyan trees, and cattle graze on the slope by the river, while my days will pass into the dark.
This is my prayer, that I may know before I leave why the earth called me to her arms.
Why her night’s silence spoke to me of stars, and her daylight kissed my thoughts into flower.
Before I go may I linger over my last refrain, completing its music, may the lamp be lit to see your face and the wreath woven to crown you.
What music is that in whose measure the world is rocked?
We laugh when it beats upon the crest of life, we shrink in terror when it returns into the dark.
But the play is the same that comes and goes with the rhythm of the endless music.
You hide your treasure in the palm of your hand, and we cry that we are robbed.
But open and shut your palm as you will, the gain and the loss are the same.
At the game you play with your own self you lose and win at once.
I have kissed this world with my eyes and my limbs; I have wrapt it within my heart in numberless folds; I have flooded its days and nights with thoughts till the world and my life have grown one,—and I love my life because I love the light of the sky so enwoven with me.
If to leave this world be as real as to love it—then there must be a meaning in the meeting and the parting of life.
If that love were deceived in death, then the canker of this deceit would eat into all things, and the stars would shrivel and grow black.
The Cloud said to me, “I vanish”; the Night said, “I plunge into the fiery dawn.”
The Pain said, “I remain in deep silence as his footprint.”
“I die into the fulness,” said my life to me.
The Earth said, “My lights kiss your thoughts every moment.”