Wait, wait yet awhile, my eager friend. I shall yield but too soon this wasted thing, Whose agony overwrought and useless Exhausts your patience. I would not have your honest hunger Wait upon these moments: But this chain, though made of a breath, Is hard to break. And the will to die, Stronger than all things strong, Is stayed by a will to live Feebler than all things feeble. Forgive me comrade; I tarry too long. It is memory that holds my spirit; A procession of distant days, A vision of youth spent in a dream, A face that bids my eyelids not to sleep, A voice that lingers in my ears, A hand that touches my hand. Forgive me that you have waited too long. It is over now, and all is faded:-- The face, the voice, the hand and the mist that brought them hither. The knot is untied. The cord is cleaved. And that which is neither food nor drink is withdrawn. Approach, my hungry comrade; The board is made ready, And the fare, frugal and spare, Is given with love. Come, and dig your beak here, into the left side, And tear out of its cage this smaller bird, Whose wings can beat no more: I would have it soar with you into the sky. Come now, my friend, I am your host tonight, And you my welcome guest. BEYOND MY SOLITUDE Beyond my solitude is another solitude, and to him who dwells therein my aloneness is a crowded market-place and my silence a confusion of sounds. Too young am I and too restless to seek that above-solitude. The voices of yonder valley still hold my ears, and its shadows bar my way and I cannot go. Beyond these hills is a grove of enchantment and to him who dwells therein my peace is but a whirlwind and my enchantment an illusion. Too young am I and too riotous to seek that sacred grove. The taste of blood is clinging in my mouth, and the bow and the arrows of my fathers yet linger in my hand and I cannot go. Beyond this burdened self lives my freer self; and to him my dreams are a battle fought in twilight and my desires the rattling of bones. Too young am I and too outraged to be my freer self. And how shall I become my freer self unless I slay my burdened selves, or unless all men become free? How shall my leaves fly singing upon the wind unless my roots shall wither in the dark? How shall the eagle in me soar against the sun until my fledglings leave the nest which I with my own beak have built for them? THE LAST WATCH At the high-tide of night, when the first breath of dawn came upon the wind, the Forerunner, he who calls himself echo to a voice yet unheard, left his bed-chamber and ascended to the roof of his house. Long he stood and looked down upon the slumbering city. Then he raised his head, and even as if the sleepless spirits of all those asleep had gathered around him, he opened his lips and spoke, and he said: