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.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Stray Birds, by