Stray Birds
Around the sunny island of Life swells day and night death's
limitless song of the sea.
253
Is not this mountain like a flower, with its petals of hills,
drinking the sunlight?
254
The real with its meaning read wrong and emphasis misplaced is
the unreal.
255
Find your beauty, my heart, from the world's movement, like the
boat that has the grace of the wind and the water.
256
The eyes are not proud of their sight but of their eyeglasses.
257
I live in this little world of mine and am afraid to make it the
least less. Lift me into thy world and let me have the freedom
gladly to lose my all.
258
The false can never grow into truth by growing in power.
259
My heart, with its lapping waves of song, longs to caress this
green world of the sunny day.
260
Wayside grass, love the star, then your dreams will come out in
flowers.
261
Let your music, like a sword, pierce the noise of the market to
its heart.
262
The trembling leaves of this tree touch my heart like the fingers
of an infant child.
263
This sadness of my soul is her bride's veil.
It waits to be lifted in the night.
264
The little flower lies in the dust.
It sought the path of the butterfly.
265
I am in the world of the roads. The night comes. Open thy gate,
thou world of the home.
266
I have sung the songs of thy day. In the evening let me carry
thy lamp through the stormy path.
267
I do not ask thee into the house.
Come into my infinite loneliness, my Lover.
268
Death belongs to life as birth does. The walk is in the raising
of the foot as in the laying of it down.
269
I have learnt the simple meaning of thy whispers in flowers and
sunshine--teach me to know thy words in pain and death.
270
The night's flower was late when the morning kissed her, she
shivered and sighed and dropped to the ground.
271
Through the sadness of all things I hear the crooning of the
Eternal Mother.
272
I came to your shore as a stranger, I lived in your house as a
guest, I leave your door as a friend, my earth.
273
Let my thoughts come to you, when I am gone, like the afterglow
of sunset at the margin of starry silence.
274
Light in my heart the evening star of rest and then let the night
whisper to me of love.
275
I am a child in the dark.
I stretch my hands through the coverlet of night for thee,
Mother.
276
The day of work is done. Hide my face in your arms, Mother.
Let me dream.
277
The lamp of meeting burns long; it goes out in a moment at the
parting.
278
One word keep for me in thy silence, O World, when I am dead, "I
have loved."
279
We live in this world when we love it.
280
Let the dead have the immortality of fame, but the living the
immortality of love.
281
I have seen thee as the half-awakened child sees his mother in
the dusk of the dawn and then smiles and sleeps again.
282
I shall die again and again to know that life is inexhaustible.
283
While I was passing with the crowd in the road I saw thy smile
from the balcony and I sang and forgot all noise.
284
Love is life in its fulness like the cup with its wine.
285
They light their own lamps and sing their own words in their
temples.
But the birds sing thy name in thine own morning light,--for thy
name is joy.
286
Lead me in the centre of thy silence to fill my heart with songs.
287
Let them live who choose in their own hissing world of fireworks.
My heart longs for thy stars, my God.
288
Love's pain sang round my life like the unplumbed sea, and love's
joy sang like birds in its flowering groves.
289
Put out the lamp when thou wishest.
I shall know thy darkness and shall love it.
290
When I stand before thee at the day's end thou shalt see my scars
and know that I had my wounds and also my healing.
291
Some day I shall sing to thee in the sunrise of some other world,
"I have seen thee before in the light of the earth, in the love
of man."
292
Clouds come floating into my life from other days no longer to
shed rain or usher storm but to give colour to my sunset sky.
293
Truth raises against itself the storm that scatters its seeds
broadcast.
294
The storm of the last night has crowned this morning with golden
peace.
295
Truth seems to come with its final word; and the final word gives
birth to its next.
296
Blessed is he whose fame does not outshine his truth.
297
Sweetness of thy name fills my heart when I forget mine--like thy
morning sun when the mist is melted.
298
The silent night has the beauty of the mother and the clamorous
day of the child.
299
The world loved man when he smiled. The world became afraid of
him when he laughed.
300
God waits for man to regain his childhood in wisdom.
301
Let me feel this world as thy love taking form, then my love will
help it.
302
Thy sunshine smiles upon the winter days of my heart, never
doubting of its spring flowers.
303
God kisses the finite in his love and man the infinite.
304
Thou crossest desert lands of barren years to reach the moment of
fulfilment.
305
God's silence ripens man's thoughts into speech.
306
Thou wilt find, Eternal Traveller, marks of thy footsteps across
my songs.
307
Let me not shame thee, Father, who displayest thy glory in thy
children.
308
Cheerless is the day, the light under frowning clouds is like a
punished child with traces of tears on its pale cheeks, and the
cry of the wind is like the cry of a wounded world. But I know I
am travelling to meet my Friend.
309
To-night there is a stir among the palm leaves, a swell in the
sea, Full Moon, like the heart throb of the world. From what
unknown sky hast thou carried in thy silence the aching secret of
love?
310
I dream of a star, an island of light, where I shall be born and
in the depth of its quickening leisure my life will ripen its
works like the ricefield in the autumn sun.
311
The smell of the wet earth in the rain rises like a great chant
of praise from the voiceless multitude of the insignificant.
312
That love can ever lose is a fact that we cannot accept as truth.
313
We shall know some day that death can never rob us of that which
our soul has gained, for her gains are one with herself.
314
God comes to me in the dusk of my evening with the flowers from
my past kept fresh in his basket.
315
When all the strings of my life will be tuned, my Master, then at
every touch of thine will come out the music of love.
316
Let me live truly, my Lord, so that death to me become true.
317
Man's history is waiting in patience for the triumph of the
insulted man.
318
I feel thy gaze upon my heart this moment like the sunny silence
of the morning upon the lonely field whose harvest is over.
319
I long for the Island of Songs across this heaving Sea of Shouts.
320
The prelude of the night is commenced in the music of the sunset,
in its solemn hymn to the ineffable dark.
321
I have scaled the peak and found no shelter in fame's bleak and
barren height. Lead me, my Guide, before the light fades, into
the valley of quiet where life's harvest mellows into golden
wisdom.
322
Things look phantastic in this dimness of the dusk--the spires
whose bases are lost in the dark and tree tops like blots of ink.
I shall wait for the morning and wake up to see thy city in the
light.
323
I have suffered and despaired and known death and I am glad that
I am in this great world.
324
There are tracts in my life that are bare and silent. They are
the open spaces where my busy days had their light and air.
325
Release me from my unfulfilled past clinging to me from behind
making death difficult.
326
Let this be my last word, that I trust in thy love.