Stages

As every flower fades and as all

Departs, so life at every stage,

So every virtue, so our grasp of truth,

Blooms in its day and may not last forever.

Since life may summon us at every

Be ready, heart, for parting, new endeavor,

Be ready bravely and without

To find new light that old ties cannot give.

In all beginnings dwells a magic

For guarding us and helping us to live.

Serenely let us move to distant

And let no sentiments of home detain us.

The Cosmic Spirit seeks not to restrain

But lifts us stage by stage to wider spaces.

If we accept a home of our own making,

Familiar habit makes for indolence.

We must prepare for parting and

Or else remain the slave of permanence.

Even the hour of our death may

Us speeding on to fresh and newer spaces,

And life may summon us to newer races.

So be it, heart: bid farewell without end.

This is one of the poems by Hermann Hesse that we can find in his last novel The Glass Bead Game.

With that novel he won the Nobel Prize of Literature in 1946.

Mariza