Many Gods. Rice Cale Young

from the sacred Wisdom.

      Round and round where the idols gaze

      So pitiless on his pained distress

      He passes on,

      Pale-eyed and wan —

      A pariah like the dogs behind him.

      Oh, what sin in a life begot

      Thousands of lives ago did he sin

      That he is now by all forgot,

      Even by Lord Gautama?

      Oh, what sin, that the lowest shun

      His very name as a thing of shame —

      A sound to taint

      The winds that faint

      From the high bells that hear it uttered!

      Midnight comes and the hours of morn,

      Tapers die and the flowers all

      From the most fêted altars: lorn

      And desolate is their odour.

      Midnight goes, but he watches still

      By each cold spire the moon sets fire,

      By every palm

      Whose silvery calm

      Pillar and jewelled porch pray under.

      Is it dawn that is breaking?.. No,

      Only a star that falls in the sea,

      Only a wind-bell's louder flow

      Of praise to Lord Gautama.

      Faithless dawn! with illusive feet

      It comes too late to ease his fate.

      He sinks asleep

      A helpless heap,

      Tho for it he may never reach Nirvana.

      THE SHIPS OF THE SEA

      Into port when the sun was setting

      Rode the ship that bore my love,

      Over the breakers wildly fretting,

      Under the skies that shone above.

      Down to the beach I ran to meet him;

      He would come as he had said:

      And he came – in a sailor's coffin,

      Dead!..

      O the ships of the sea! the women

      They from all hope but Heaven part!

      The tide has nothing now to tell me,

      The breakers only break my heart!

      KINCHINJUNGA

(Which is the next highest of mountains)I

      O white Priest of Eternity, around

      Whose lofty summit veiling clouds arise

      Of the earth's immemorial sacrifice

      To Brahma in whose breath all lives and dies;

      O Hierarch enrobed in timeless snows,

      First-born of Asia whose maternal throes

      Seem changed now to a million human woes,

      Holy thou art and still! Be so, nor sound

      One sigh of all the mystery in thee found.

II

      For in this world too much is overclear,

      Immortal Ministrant to many lands,

      From whose ice-altars flow to fainting sands

      Rivers that each libation poured expands.

      Too much is known, O Ganges-giving sire;

      Thy people fathom life and find it dire,

      Thy people fathom death, and, in it, fire

      To live again, tho in Illusion's sphere,

      Behold concealed as Grief is in a tear.

III

      Wherefore continue, still enshrined, thy rites,

      Tho dark Thibet, that dread ascetic, falls

      In strange austerity, whose trance appals,

      Before thee, and a suppliant on thee calls.

      Continue still thy silence high and sure,

      That something beyond fleeting may endure —

      Something that shall forevermore allure

      Imagination on to mystic flights

      Wherein alone no wing of Evil lights.

IV

      Yea, wrap thy awful gulfs and acolytes

      Of lifted granite round with reachless snows.

      Stand for Eternity while pilgrim rows

      Of all the nations envy thy repose.

      Ensheath thy swart sublimities, unscaled.

      Be that alone on earth which has not failed.

      Be that which never yet has yearned or ailed,

      But since primeval Power upreared thy heights

      Has stood above all deaths and all delights.

V

      And tho thy loftier Brother shall be King,

      High-priest be thou to Brahma unrevealed,

      While thy white sanctity forever sealed

      In icy silence leaves desire congealed.

      In ghostly ministrations to the sun,

      And to the mendicant stars and the moon-nun,

      Be holy still, till East to West has run,

      And till no sacrificial suffering

      On any shrine is left to tell life's sting.

      THE BARREN WOMAN

(Benares)

      At the burning-ghat, O Kali,

      Mother divine and dread,

      See, I am waiting with open lips

      Over the newly dead.

      I am childless and barren; pity

      And let me catch the soul

      Of him who here on the kindled bier

      Pays to Existence toll.

      See, by his guileless body

      I cook the bread and eat.

      Give me the soul he does not need

      Now, for conception sweet.

      Hear, or my lord and husband

      Shall send me from his door

      And take to his side a fairer bride

      Whose breast shall be less poor.

      Oft I have sought thy temples,

      By Ganges now I seek,

      Where ashes of all the dead are strewn,