TIME AFTER TIME I came to your gate with raised hands, asking for more and yet more. You gave and gave, now in slow measure, now in sudden excess. I took some, and some things I let drop; some lay heavy on my hands; some I made into playthings and broke them when tired; till the wrecks and the hoard of your gifts grew immense, hiding you, and the ceaseless expectation wore my heart out. Take, oh takehas now become my cry. Shatter all from this beggar's bowl: put out this lamp of the importunate watcher: hold my hands, raise me from the still-gathering heap of your gifts into the bare infinity of your uncrowded presence.
YOU ALLOWED your kingly power to vanish, Shajahan, but your wish was to make imperishable a tear-drop of love. Time has no pity for the human heart, he laughs at its sad struggle to remember. You allured him with beauty, made him captive, and crowned the formless death with fadeless form. The secret whispered in the hush of night to the ear of your love is wrought in the perpetual silence of stone. Though empires crumble to dust, and centuries are lost in shadows the marble still sighs to the stars, 'I remember.' 'I remember.'-But life forgets, for she has her call to the Endless and she goes on her voyage unburdened, leaving her memories to the forlorn forms of beauty.