I thought and thought; our names would not come to my mind.
Tears shone in her eyes. She held up her right hand to me. I took it and stood silent.
Our lamp had flickered in the evening breeze and died.
Traveller, must you go?
The night is still and the darkness swoons upon the forest.
The lamps are bright in our balcony, the flowers all fresh, and the youthful eyes still awake.
Is the time for your parting come?
Traveller, must you go?
We have not bound your feet with our entreating arms.
Your doors are open. Your horse stands saddled at the gate.
If we have tried to bar your passage it was but with our songs.
Did we ever try to hold you back it was but with our eyes.
Traveller, we are helpless to keep you. We have only our tears.
What quenchless fire glows in your eyes?
What restless fever runs in your blood?
What call from the dark urges you?
What awful incantation have you read among the stars in the sky, that with a sealed secret message the night entered your heart, silent and strange?
If you do not care for merry meetings, if you must have peace, weary heart, we shall put our lamps out and silence our harps.
We shall sit still in the dark in the rustle of leaves, and the tired moon will shed pale rays on your window.
O traveller, what sleepless spirit has touched you from the heart of the midnight?
I spent my day on the scorching hot dust of the road.
Now, in the cool of the evening, I knock at the door of the inn. It is deserted and in ruins.
A grim ashath tree spreads its hungry clutching roots through the gaping fissures of the walks.
Days have been when wayfarers came here to wash their weary feet.
They spread their mats in the courtyard in the dim light of the early moon, and sat and talked of strange lands.
They woke refreshed in the morning when birds made them glad, and friendly flowers nodded their heads at them from the wayside.
But no lighted lamp awaited me when I came here.
The black smudges of smoke left by many a forgotten evening lamp stare, like blind eyes, from the wall.
Fireflies flit in the bush near the dried-up pond, and bamboo branches fling their shadows on the grass-grown path.