LITMIR.BIZ

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drum-skins in the busy town, nor screech

      Of owl and night jar; wholly wrapt from self

      In keen unraveling of the threads of thought

      And steadfast pacing of life's labyrinths.

      Thus would he sit till midnight hushed the world,

      Save where the beasts of darkness in the brake

      Crept and cried out, as fear and hatred cry,

      As lust and avarice and anger creep

      In the black jungles of man's ignorance.

      Then slept he for what space the fleet moon asks

      To swim a tenth part of her cloudy sea;

      But rose ere the false-dawn, and stood again

      Wistful on some dark platform of his hill,

      Watching the sleeping earth with ardent eyes

      And thoughts embracing all its living things,

      While o'er the waving fields that murmur moved

      Which is the kiss of Morn waking the lands,

      And in the east that miracle of Day

      Gathered and grew: at first a dusk so dim

      Night seems still unaware of whispered dawn,

      But soon—before the jungle-cock crows twice—

      A white verge clear, a widening, brightening white,

      High as the herald-star, which fades in floods

      Of silver, warming into pale gold, caught

      By topmost clouds, and flaming on their rims

      To fervent golden glow, flushed from the brink

      With saffron, scarlet, crimson, amethyst;

      Whereat the sky burns splendid to the blue,

      And, robed in raiment of glad light, the

      Song Of Life and Glory cometh!

      Then our Lord,

      After the manner of a Rishi, hailed

      The rising orb, and went—ablutions made—

      Down by the winding path unto the town;

      And in the fashion of a Rishi passed

      From street to street, with begging-bowl in hand,

      Gathering the little pittance of his needs.

      Soon was it filled, for all the townsmen cried,

      "Take of our store, great sir!" and "Take of ours!"

      Marking his godlike face and eyes enwrapt;

      And mothers, when they saw our Lord go by,

      Would bid their children fall to kiss his feet,

      And lift his robe's hem to their brows, or run

      To fill his jar, and fetch him milk and cakes.

      And ofttimes as he paced, gentle and slow,

      Radiant with heavenly pity, lost in care

      For those he knew not, save as fellow lives,

      The dark surprised eyes of some Indian maid

      Would dwell in sudden love and worship deep

      On that majestic form, as if she saw

      Her dreams of tenderest thought made true, and grace

      Fairer than mortal fire her breast. But he

      Passed onward with the bowl and yellow robe,

      By mild speech paying all those gifts of hearts,

      Wending his way back to the solitudes

      To sit upon his hill with holy men,

      And hear and ask of wisdom and its roads.

      Midway on Ratnagiri's groves of calm,

      Beyond the city, but below the caves,

      Lodged such as hold the body foe to soul,

      And flesh a beast which men must chain and tame

      With bitter pains, till sense of pain is killed,

      And tortured nerves vex torturer no more—

      Yogis and Brahmacharis, Bhikshus, all—

      A gaunt and mournful band, dwelling apart.

      Some day and night had stood with lifted arms,

      Till—drained of blood and withered by disease

      Their slowly-wasting joints and stiffened limbs

      Jutted from sapless shoulders like dead forks from forest trunks.

      Others had clenched their hands

      So long and with so fierce a fortitude,

      The claw-like nails grew through the festered palm.

      Some walked on sandals spiked; some with sharp flints

      Gashed breast and brow and thigh, scarred these with fire,

      Threaded their flesh with jungle thorns and spits,

      Besmeared with mud and ashes, crouching foul

      In rags of dead men wrapped about their loins.

      Certain there were inhabited the spots

      Where death pyres smouldered, cowering defiled

      With corpses for their company, and kites

      Screaming around them o'er the funeral-spoils;

      Certain who cried five hundred times a day

      The names of Shiva, wound with darting snakes

      About their sun-tanned necks and hollow flanks,

      One palsied foot drawn up against the ham.

      So gathered they, a grievous company;

      Crowns blistered by the blazing heat, eyes bleared,

      Sinews and muscles shrivelled, visages

      Haggard and wan as slain men's, five days dead;

      Here crouched one in the dust who noon by noon

      Meted a thousand grains of millet out,

      Ate it with famished patience, seed by seed,

      And so starved on; there one who bruised his pulse

      With bitter leaves lest palate should be pleased;

      And next, a miserable saint self-maimed,

      Eyeless and tongueless, sexless, crippled, deaf;

      The body by the mind being thus stripped

      For glory of much suffering, and the bliss

      Which they shall win—say holy books—whose woe

      Shames gods that send us woe, and makes men gods

      Stronger to suffer than hell is to harm.

      Whom sadly eyeing spake our Lord to one,

      Chief of the woe-begones: "Much-suffering sir

      These many moons I dwell upon the hill—

      Who am a seeker of the Truth—and see

      My brothers here, and thee, so piteously

      Self-anguished; wherefore add ye ills to life

      Which is so evil?"

      Answer made the sage

      "'T is written if a man shall mortify

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