16
I have had my invitation to this world's festival, and thus my life had been blessed. My eyes have seen and my ears have heard.
It was my part at this feast to play upon my instrument, and I have done all I could.
Now, I ask, has the time come at last when I may go in and see thy face and offer thee my silent salutation?

87
In desperate hope I go and search for her in all corners of my rook; I find her not.
My house is small and what once has gone from it can never be regained.
But infinite is thy mansion, my lord, and seeking her I have come to they door.
I stand under the golden canopy of thine evening sky and lift my eager eyes to thy face.

I have come to the brink of eternity from which nothing can vanish—no hope, no happiness, no vision of a face seen through tears.
Oh, dip my emptied life into that ocean, plunge it into the deepest fullness. Let me for once feel that lost sweet tough in the allness of the universe.

95
I was not aware of the moment when I first crossed the threshold of this life.
What was the power that made me open out into this vast mystery like a bud in the forest at midnight.

When in the morning I looked upon the light I felt in a moment that I was not stranger in this world, that inscrutable without name and form had taken me in its arms in form of my own mother.
Even so, in death the same unknown will appear as ever known to me. And because I love this life, I know I shall love death as well.

The child cried out when from the right breast the mother takes it away, in the very next moment to find in the left one its consolation.

100
I dive down into the depth of the ocean of forms, hoping to gain the perfect pearl of the formless.
No more sailing from harbour to harbour with this my weather—beaten boat. The days are long passed when my sport was to be tossed on waves.

And now I am eager to die into the deathless.

Into the audience hall by the fathomless abyss where swells up the music of toneless strings I shall take this harp of my life.
I shall tune it to the notes of for ever, and, when it has sobbed out its last utterance, lay down my silent harp at the feet of the silent.