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. But no colours appear, and no perfume. 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.
LET THE LINKS of my shackles snap at every step of thy dance, O Lord of Dancing, and let my heart wake in the freedom of the eternal voice. Let it feel the touch of that foot that ever sets swinging the lotus-seat of the muse, and with its perfume maddens the air through ages. Rebellious atoms are subdued into forms at thy dance-time, the suns and planets,anklets of light,twirl round thy moving feet, and, age after age. Things struggle to wake from dark slumber, through pain of life, into consciousness, and the ocean of thy bliss breaks out in tumults of suffering and joy. Before I leave, tinge my heart in secret with thine own colour, the colour of the young smile, of tears shaded with ancient sadness. Let it tinge my thoughts, my deeds, the flame of my evening lamp, the waking moment of my midnight. Before I leave, rouse my heart with the swing of thy dancing feet, the swing that wakens stars in the deep of night, frees the stream from the rocky cave, gives voice to clouds in thunder and rain, the swing by which the balance in the centre of existence is swayed in endless cycles of movement.
