“A message came from my youth of vanished days, saying, 'I wait for you among the quivering of unborn May, where smiles ripen for tears and hours ache with songs unsung.' It says, 'Come to me across the worn-out track of age, through the gates of death. For dreams fade, hopes fail, the fathered fruits of the year decay, but I am the eternal truth, and you shall meet me again and again in your voyage of life from shore to shore.”

“My dearest life, I know you are not mine forever; but do love me even if it’s for this moment. After that I shall vanish into the forest where you cast me, I won’t ask anyone for anything again. Give me something that can last me till I die.”

“I have spent many days stringing and unstringing my instrument while the song I came to sing remains unsung.”

“The song I came to sing remains unsung to this day. I have spent my days in stringing and in unstringing my instrument. The time has not come true, the words have not been rightly set; only there is the agony of wishing in my heart . . .”

“I travelled the old road every day, I took my fruits to the market,my cattle to the meadows, I ferried my boat across the stream andall the ways were well known to me. One morning my basket was heavy with wares. Men were busy inthe fields, the pastures crowded with cattle; the breast of earthheaved with the mirth of ripening rice. Suddenly there was a tremor in the air, and the sky seemed tokiss me on my forehead. My mind started up like the morning out ofmist. I forgot to follow the track. I stepped a few paces from thepath, and my familiar world appeared strange to me, like a flowerI had only known in bud. My everyday wisdom was ashamed. I went astray in the fairylandof things. It was the best luck of my life that I lost my path thatmorning, and found my eternal childhood.”

“My Friend: Art thou abroad on this stormy night on thy journey of love, my friend? The sky groans like one in despair. I have no sleep tonight. Ever and again I open my door and look out on the darkness, my friend! I can see nothing before me. I wonder where lies thy path! By what dim shore of the ink-black river, by what far edge of the frowning forest, through what mazy depth of gloom art thou threading thy course to come to me, my friend?”

“I thought that my voyage had come to its end at the last limit of my power, that the path before me was closed, that provisions were exhausted, and the time come to take shelter in a silent obscurity, but I find that thy will knows no end in me, and when old words die out on the tongue, new melodies break forth from the heart, and where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders.”