Fare you well, people of Orphalese.
This day has ended.
It is closing upon us even as the water-lily upon its own tomorrow.
What was given us here we shall keep,
And if it suffices not, then again must we come together and together stretch our hands unto the giver.
Forget not that I shall come back to you.
A little while, and my longing shall gather dust and foam for another body.
A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.
Farewell to you and the youth I have spent with you.
It was but yesterday we met in a dream.
You have sung to me in my aloneness, and I of your longings have built a tower in the sky.
But now our sleep has fled and our dream is over, and it is no longer dawn.
The noontide is upon us and our half waking has turned to fuller day, and we must part.
If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more, we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song.
And if our hands should meet in another dream we shall build another tower in the sky.

So saying he made a signal to the seamen, and straightaway they weighed anchor and cast the ship loose from its moorings, and they moved eastward.
And a cry came from the people as from a single heart, and it rose into the dusk and was carried out over the sea like a great trumpeting.
Only Almitra was silent, gazing after the ship until it had vanished into the mist.
And when all the people were dispersed she still stood alone upon the sea-wall, remembering in her heart his saying:

“A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.”

Fare you well, people of Orphalese.
This day has ended.
It is closing upon us even as the water-lily upon its own tomorrow.
What was given us here we shall keep,
And if it suffices not, then again must we come together and together stretch our hands unto the giver.

A man of trust, love and surrender never loses hope. He is a chronic optimist; otherwise, mystics would have stopped speaking to you, because what have you given to them except pain, suffering, condemnation, death? But they go on hoping against hope; their longing to bring you the spring of life is too great, even all of you together cannot destroy it. You have destroyed many mystics – crucified them, poisoned them, stoned them – but still they died with blessings on their lips.

Fare you well, people of Orphalese. This day has ended. This life is closing, but hope has not ended – it knows no ending. For thousands of years the story has been repeated again and again. Your blindness, your deafness are infinite – and the compassion, and love, and trust of the mystics is greater even than your blindness and deafness. That’s the only hope for humanity.

The mystics know they are talking to the walls, but they go on talking; they know they are not being listened to, but they go on knocking on your doors. They know you are annoyed, irritated – why do these strangers disturb you? But it is impossible for these strangers, these people from the other world, to stop loving you. There is nothing that you can do to kill their love, to crucify their compassion.

Even when Jesus was crucified, still he promised his followers, “Don’t be worried. Soon I will be with you again” – as if crucifixion was just a trivial matter. When Gautam Buddha was dying, thousands of his disciples were crying and weeping, and he said to them, “Wash your tears because whenever you need, I will be with you. In your prayers, in your meditations, you will find me always amongst you.”