THE NAME SHE called me by, like a flourishing jasmine, covered the whole seventeen years of our love. With its sound mingled the quiver of the light through the leaves, the scent of the grass in the rainy night, and the sad silence of the last hour of many an idle day. Not the work of God alone was he who answered to that name; she created him again for herself during those seventeen swift years. Other years were to follow, but their vagrant days, no longer gathered within the fold of that name uttered in her voice, stray and are scattered. They ask me, 'Who should fold us?' I find no answer and sit silent, and they cry to me while dispersing, 'We seek a shepherdess!' Whom should they seek? That they do not know. And like derelict evening clouds they drift in the trackless dark, and are lost and forgotten.
SHE WHO EVER had remained in the depth of my being, in the twilight of gleams and of glimpses; she who never opened her veils in the morning light, will be my last gift to thee, my God, folded in my final song. Words have wooed yet failed to win her; persuasion has stretched to her its eager arms in vain. I have roamed from country to country keeping her in the core of my heart, and around her have risen and fallen the growth and decay of my life. Over my thoughts and actions, my slumbers and dreams, she reigned yet dwelled alone and apart. Many a man knocked at my door and asked for her and turned away in despair. There was none in the world who ever saw her face to face, and she remained in her loneliness waiting for thy recognition.