stages

As every flower fades, so with all youth

And age brings different flowers at each stage of life,

Blooms each and every virtue and wisdom

In their time, and may not last forever.

From within every heart,  life calls, be

Ready for parting, and each new endeavor,

To bravely and without remorse

Find new beauty in the next other.

In all beginnings dwells a magic

Protecting us and helping us to live.

We shall traverse realm on realm,

cleaving to none as a home,

The world of spirit wishes not to fetter us,

He will raise us higher, to wider spaces.

We're hardly at home in one circle,

 Familiar habits make for indolence,

In someone who is ready to depart and travel,
 The crippling habit may dismiss itself.

Perhaps even the hour of death

may bring us home to new fresh spaces

The call of life to us is never ending ...

Well, my heart, bid farewell continually!

~ Hermann Hesse