বাজে নিশীথের নীরব ছন্দে
                 বিশ্বকবির দান
   আঁধার-বাঁশির রন্ধ্রে রন্ধ্রে
                 তারার বহ্নিগান!

I AM LIKE A remnant of a cloud of autumn uselessly roaming in the sky, O my sun ever glorious! Thy touch has not yet melted my vapour, making me one with thy light, and thus I count months and years separated from thee.
If this be thy wish and if this be thy play, then take this fleeting emptiness of mine, paint it with colours, gild it with gold, float it on the wanton wind and spread it in varied wonders.
And again when it shall be thy wish to end this play at night, I shall melt and vanish away in the dark, or it may be in a smile of the white morning, in a coolness of purity transparent.

THE FIRST FLUSH of dawn glistens on the dew-dripping leaves of the forest.
The man who reads the sky cries:
'Friends, we have come!'
They stop and look around.
On both sides of the road the corn is ripe to the horizon,
the glad golden answer of the earth to the morning light.
The current of daily life moves slowly
between the village near the hill and the one by the river bank.
The potter's wheel goes round, the woodcutter brings fuel to the market, the cow-herd takes his cattle to the pasture,
and the woman with the pitcher on her head walks to the well.
But where is the King's castle, the mine of gold, the secret book of magic,
the sage who knows love's utter wisdom?
'The stars cannot be wrong,' assures the reader of the sky.
'Their signal points to that spot.'
And reverently he walks to a wayside spring
from which wells up a stream of water, a liquid light,
like the morning melting into a chorus of tears and laughter.
Near it in a palm grove surrounded by a strange hush stands a leaf-
thatched hut,
at whose portal sits the poet of the unknown shore, and sings:
'Mother, open the gate!'