Puslapio vaizdai
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Such music while I lived, even though it brought
Torture and death. For what were it to lie
Sleek, crowned with roses, drinking vulgar praise,
And surfeited with offerings, the dull gift

Of ignorant hands - all which I might have known
To this diviner failure? Godlike 't is

To climb upon the icy ledge, and fall

Where other footsteps dare not. So I knew
My fate, and it was near.

For to a pine

They bound me willing, and with cruel stripes
Tore me, and took my life.

But from my blood
Was born the stream of song, and on its flow
My poor flute, to the cool swift river borne,
Floated, and thence adown a lordlier tide
Into the deep, wide sea. I do not blame
Phoebus, or Nature which has set this bar
Betwixt success and failure, for I know
How far high failure overleaps the bound
Of low successes. Only suffering draws
The inner heart of song and can elicit
The perfumes of the soul. 'T were not enough
To fail, for that were happiness to him
Who ever upward looks with reverent eye
And seeks but to admire. So, since the race
Of bards soars highest; as who seek to show
Our lives as in a glass; therefore it comes
That suffering weds with song, from him of old,
Who solaced his blank darkness with his verse;
Through all the story of neglect and scorn,
Necessity, sheer hunger, early death,

Which smite the singer still. Not only those
Who hold clear accents of the voice divine

Are honorable

they are blest, indeed,

Whate'er the world has held but those who hear

Some fair faint echoes, though the crowd be deaf,
And see the white gods' garments on the hills,
Which the crowd sees not, though they may not find
Fit music for their visions; they are blest,
Not pitiable. Not from arrogant pride

Nor over boldness fail they who have striven
To tell what they have heard, with voice too weak
For such high message. More it is than ease,
Palace and pomp, honors and luxuries,

To have seen white Presences upon the hills,
To have heard the voices of the Eternal Gods.'

So spake he, and I seemed to look on him,
Whose sad young eyes grow on us from the page
Of his own verse: who did himself to death:
Or whom the dullard slew: or whom the sea
Rapt from us: and I passed without a word,
Slow, grave, with many musings.

FROM THE ODE OF LIFE.'6

THE ODE OF EVIL.

OH, who shall sing of Life and not of Ill?

The essence of our will

Is fullest liberty to stray,

From out the green and blessed way,

Amid the desert wastes of drought and death.

This is the power that makes us free,

This of our Being is the penalty;

And maybe the Eternal Will,

Clothing itself with form to bid Creation be,
Took to itself some boundary, and awhile,
Self-limited, made vile

And subjected to Law the Majesty

Which all the universe of space did fill.
Evil is Life,

The conflict of great laws pervading space;
Evil is strife,

Which keeps the creature in its ordered place.

If

any hand divine should e'er withdraw

The fixed coercive potency of Law,

Surely the universe of things would fade
And cease and be unmade.

Where Law is, there is Good,

And freedom to obey or to transgress;

Else 't were no Law, but, weaker far and less,

If one created being might not the thing it would.

Young lives spring up and fade,

Wither and are opprest,

Toil takes the world, and pain,

And all the things that God has made

Travail and groan and fain would be at rest,

And Wrong prevails again.

And we we lift a hopeless eye

Up to the infinite sky,

Mourning the Ill that is, and shall be yet,

Weak creatures who forget

The very law and root of Life,

That it is sown in pain and nursed in woe and strife.

The evil blight of war

Torments the race from age to age,

And man slays man through all the years that are,

And savage lust and brutal rage

Deform this glorious heritage of earth.

We shudder and grow faint,

Knowing the far fair dreams of seer and saint

Show thin and little worth.

The young life, rising, sinks in sloughs of sense,

And wanders and is lost.

Alas! for days of young-eyed innocence.

Alas! for the calm hours ere, passion-tost,

The young soul grew, a white flower sweet and pure.

Yet this is sure,

That not in tranquil zones of endless calm

Springs up the victor's palm,

But blown by circling storms which blot the sky,

Nor fitting were it to the eye

Always to look upon a cloudless sun,

Grown blind with too much light before the journey done.

The victories of Right

Are born of strife.

There were no Day were there no Night,

Nor, without dying, Life.

There only doth Right triumph, where the Wrong

Is mightiest and most strong;

There were no Good, indeed, were there no Ill.

And when the final victory shall come,

Burst forth, oh Awful Sun, and draw Creation home!

Not within Time or Space

Lines drawn in opposite ways grow one,

But in some Infinite place

Before the Eternal throne;

There, ways to-day divergent, Right and Wrong,
Approach the nearer that they grow more long.
There at the Eternal feet,

Fused, joined, and grown complete,

The circle rounds itself, the enclosing wall

Of the Universe sinks down, and God is all in all !

EDWIN ARNOLD.

FROM THE LIGHT OF ASIA.'7

THE RENUNCIATION.

FROM BOOK IV.

THE purdah hung,

Crimson and blue, with broidered threads of gold,
Across a portal carved in sandal-wood,
Whence by three steps the way was to the bower
Of inmost splendor, and the marriage-couch
Set on a dais soft with silver cloths,

Where the foot fell as though it trod on piles
Of neem-blooms. All the walls were plates of pearl,
Cut shapely from the shells of Lanka's wave;
And o'er the alabaster roof there ran
Rich inlayings of lotus and of bird,

Wrought in skilled work of lazulite and jade,
Jacynth and jasper; woven round the dome,
And down the sides, and all about the frames
Wherein were set the fretted lattices,

Through which there breathed, with moonlight and cool airs,
Scents from the shell-flowers and the jasmine sprays;
Not bringing thither grace or tenderness

Sweeter than shed from those fair presences

Within the place the beauteous Sâkya Prince,

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And hers, the stately, bright Yasodhara.

Half risen from her soft nest at his side,

The chuddah fallen to her waist, her brow

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