A few days more, and you sail away...

And you will be missed by the earth that reared you span by span and tended your dreams dream by dream...

The earth in whose sacred sky your eyes were touched with kohl, and in whose perfumed corners you planted the days of your childhood...

You will go... and you will be missed by the road that knew us as two: we walked it in sweet childhood, gathering from its sides necklaces of jasmine and bundles of flowers; and it knew us in first youth, building through its reaches the castles of love and dreams.

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A few days more, and you sail away...

To where there awaits you what you reckoned more lasting than love: a fortune, and riches, and a new world.

As for the meadows of love and dreams — memories of love and dreams are enough for them from you...

As for the candles that used to burn, they will go on burning until they melt and vanish with the dawn, a dream among the dawn's dreams, a song among its songs...

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And you may return...

In the distant future — who knows — with a cluster of children around you and much money, your faith in the fortune and the new world disappointed.

And if it occurs to you to visit the shrines of the far-off yesterday, you will find that the lily has grown old, and the violet's fragrance has dried...

I do not know what you will feel at that; but you will have something to drown out the chokings of memory... As for him who had the like of what you had, in violet and lily, he will remain as he was yesterday: prisoner of his dreams and his hopes, searching for a thing he lost and never finding it.

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When the sail is hoisted...

And the anchor raised...

Do not look back at the shore, lest you carry in your imagination anything but smiling pictures of the abandoned shore...

As for me... I shall stay on the shore until the mast disappears... And let your wind be as you desire. And let your tomorrow be smiling like your yesterday...

And let your whole life be, like the life of the rose, sweet... O sweet one who has gone...!