The hours wait, the stars watch, the wind is still, the silence
is heavy in my heart.
Wake, Love, wake! brim my empty cup, and with a breath of song
ruffle the night.
XXV
The bird of the morning sings.
Whence has he word of the morning before the morning breaks, and
when the dragon night still holds the sky in its cold black
coils?
Tell me, bird of the morning, how, through the twofold night of
the sky and the leaves, he found his way into your dream, the
messenger out of the east?
The world did not believe you when you cried, "The sun is on his
way, the night is no more."
O sleeper, awake!
Bare your forehead, waiting for the first blessing of light, and
sing with the bird of the morning in glad faith.
XXVI
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 in 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!"
XXVII
San?tan was telling his beads by the Ganges when a Brahmin in
rags came to him and said, "Help me, I am poor!"
"My alms-bowl is all that is my own," said San?tan, "I have given
away everything I had.
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