The Light of Asia by Edwin Arnold

Author:Edwin Arnold
Language: eng
Format: epub

For things done and undone.

Higher than Indra's ye may lift your lot,

And sink it lower than the worm or gnat;

The end of many myriad lives is this,

The end of myriads that.

Only, while turns this wheel invisible,

No pause, no peace, no staying-place can be;

Who mounts will fall, who falls may mount; the spokes

Go round unceasingly!

If ye lay bound upon the wheel of change,

And no way were of breaking from the chain,

The Heart of boundless Being is a curse,

The Soul of Things fell Pain.

Ye are not bound! the Soul of Things is sweet,

The Heart of Being is celestial rest;

Stronger than woe is will: that which was Good

Doth pass to Better--Best.

I, Buddh, who wept with all my brothers' tears,

Whose heart was broken by a whole world's woe,

Laugh and am glad, for there is Liberty

Ho! ye who suffer! know

Ye suffer from yourselves. None else compels

None other holds you that ye live and die,

And whirl upon the wheel, and hug and kiss

Its spokes of agony,

Its tire of tears, its nave of nothingness.

Behold, I show you Truth! Lower than hell,

Higher than heaven, outside the utmost stars,

Farther than Brahm doth dwell,

Before beginning, and without an end,

As space eternal and as surety sure,

Is fixed a Power divine which moves to good,

Only its laws endure.

This is its touch upon the blossomed rose,

The fashion of its hand shaped lotus-leaves;

In dark soil and the silence of the seeds

The robe of Spring it weaves;

That is its painting on the glorious clouds,

And these its emeralds on the peacock's train;

It hath its stations in the stars;

Its slaves in lightning, wind, and rain.

Out of the dark it wrought the heart of man,

Out of dull shells the pheasant's pencilled neck;

Ever at toil, it brings to loveliness

All ancient wrath and wreck.

The grey eggs in the golden sun-bird's nest

Its treasures are, the bees' six-sided cell

Its honey-pot; the ant wots of its ways,

The white doves know them well.

It spreadeth forth for flight the eagle's wings

What time she beareth home her prey; it sends

The she-wolf to her cubs; for unloved things

It findeth food and friends.

It is not marred nor stayed in any use,

All liketh it; the sweet white milk it brings

To mothers' breasts; it brings the white drops, too,

Wherewith the young snake stings.

The ordered music of the marching orbs

It makes in viewless canopy of sky;

In deep abyss of earth it hides up gold,

Sards, sapphires, lazuli.

Ever and ever bringing secrets forth,

It sitteth in the green of forest-glades

Nursing strange seedlings at the cedar's root,

Devising leaves, blooms, blades.

It slayeth and it saveth, nowise moved

Except unto the working out of doom;

Its threads are Love and Life; and Death and Pain

The shuttles of its loom.

It maketh and unmaketh, mending all;

What it hath wrought is better than hath been;

Slow grows the splendid pattern that it plans

Its wistful hands between.

This is its work upon the things ye see,

The unseen things are more; men's hearts and minds,

The thoughts of peoples and their ways and wills,

Those, too, the great Law binds.

Unseen it helpeth ye with faithful hands,

Unheard it speaketh stronger than the storm.

Pity and Love are man's because long stress

Moulded blind mass to form.

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