STRUCK WITH the curse in mid-wave of your tumultuous passion, your life stilled into a stone, clean, cool and impassive. You took your sacred bath of dust, plunging deep into the primitive peace of the earth. You lay down in the dumb immense where faded days drop, like dead flowers with seeds, to sprout again into new dawns. You felt the thrill of the sun's kiss with the roots of grass and trees that are like infant's fingers clasping at mother's breast. In the night, when the tired children of dust came back to the dust, their rhythmic breath touched you with the large and placid motherliness of the earth. Wild weeds twined round you their bonds of flowering intimacy. You were lapped by the sea of life whose ripples are the leaves flutter, bees' flight, grasshoppers' dance and tremor of moths' wings. For ages you kept your ear to the ground, counting the footsteps of the unseen comer, at whose touch silence flames into music. Woman, the sin has stripped you naked, the curse has washed you pure, you have risen into a perfect life. The dew of that unfathomed night trembles on your eyelids, the mosses of ever-green years cling to your hair. You have the wonder of new birth and the wonder of old time in your awakening. You are young as the new-born flowers and old as the hills.
WHEN THOU commandest me to sing it seems that my heart would break with pride; and I look to thy face, and tears come to my eyes. All that is harsh and dissonant in my life melts into one sweet harmony-and my adoration spreads wings like a glad bird on its flight across the sea. I know thou takest pleasure in my singing. I know that only as a singer I come before thy presence. I touch by the edge of the far spreading wing of my song thy feet which I could never aspire to reach. Drunk with the joy of singing I forget myself and call thee friend who art my lord.
