THE ODOUR CRIES in the bud, 'Ah me, the day departs, the happy day of spring, and I am a prisoner in petals!' Do not lose heart, timid thing! Your bonds will burst, the bud will open into flower, and when you die in the fulness of life, even then the spring will live on. The odour pants and flutters within the bud, crying, 'Ah me, the hours pass by, yet I do not know where I go, or what it is I seek!' Do not lose heart, timid thing! The spring breeze has overheard your desire, the day will not end before you have fulfilled your being. Dark is the future to her, and the odour cries in despair, 'Ah me, through whose fault is my life so unmeaning?' 'Who can tell me, why I am at all?' Do not lose heart, timid thing! The perfect dawn is near when you will mingle your life with all life and know at last your purpose.
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 m 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!'
