The roses are still in bud; they do not yet know how we neglect to gather flowers this summer. The morning star has the same palpitating hush; the early light is enmeshed in the branches that overbrow your window, as in those other days. That times are changed I forget for a little, and have come. I forget if you ever shamed me by looking away when I bared my heart. I only remember the words that stranded on the tremor of your lips; I remember in your dark eyes sweeping shadows of passion, like the wings of a home-seeking bird in the dusk. I forget that you do not remember, and I come. 17 The rain fell fast. The river rushed and hissed. It licked up and swallowed the island, while I waited alone on the lessening bank with my sheaves of corn in a heap. From the shadows of the opposite shore the boat crosses with a woman at the helm. I cry to her, "Come to my island coiled round with hungry water, and take away my year's harvest." She comes, and takes all that I have to the last grain; I ask her to take me. But she says, "No"--the boat is laden with my gift and no room is left for me. 18 The evening beckons, and I would fain follow the travellers who sailed in the last ferry of the ebb-tide to cross the dark. Some were for home, some for the farther shore, yet all have ventured to sail. But I sit alone at the landing, having left my home and missed the boat: summer is gone and my winter harvest is lost. I wait for that love which gathers failures to sow them in tears on the dark, that they may bear fruit when day rises anew. 19 On this side of the water there is no landing; the girls do not come here to fetch water; the land along its edge is shaggy with stunted shrubs; a noisy flock of _saliks_ dig their nests in the steep bank under whose frown the fisher-boats find no shelter. You sit there on the unfrequented grass, and the morning wears on. Tell me what you do on this bank so dry that it is agape with cracks? She looks in my face and says, "Nothing, nothing whatsoever." On this side of the river the bank is deserted, and no cattle come to water. Only some stray goats from the village browse the scanty grass all day, and the solitary water-hawk watches from an uprooted _peepal_ aslant over the mud. You sit there alone in the miserly shade of a _shimool,_ and the morning wears on. Tell me, for whom do you wait? She looks in my face and says, "No one, no one at all!" 20 KACHA AND DEVAYANI KACHA AND DEVAYANI _Young Kacha came from Paradise to learn the secret of immortality from a Sage who taught the Titans, and whose daughter Devayani fell in love with him._ KACHA The time has come for me to take leave, Devayani; I have long sat at your father's feet, but to-day he completed his teaching. Graciously allow me to go back to the land of the Gods whence I came. DEVAYANI You have, as you desired, won that rare knowledge coveted by the Gods;--but think, do you aspire after nothing further? KACHA