I paced alone on the road across the field while sunset was hiding its last gold like
a miser.
The daylight sank deeper and deeper into the darkness, and the widowed land, whose
harvest had been reaped, lay silent.
Suddenly a boy's shrill voice rose into the sky. He traversed the dark unseen, leaving
the track of his song across the hush of the evening.
His village home lay there at end of the waste land, beyond the sugar-cane field,
hidden among the shadows of the banana and the slender areca plan, the
cocoa-nut and the dark green jack-fruit trees.
I stopped for a moment in my lonely way under the starlight, and saw spread before
me the darkened earth surrounding with her arms countless homes furnished with
cradles and beds, mothers'hearts and evening lamps, and young lives glad with a
gladness that knows nothing of its value for the world.