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| THE BOOKS say well, my Brothers! each man’s life | |
| The outcome of his former living is; | |
| The bygone wrongs bring forth sorrows and woes, | |
| The bygone right breeds bliss. | |
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| That which ye sow ye reap. See yonder fields! | 5 |
| The sesamum was sesamum, the corn | |
| Was corn. The Silence and the Darkness knew! | |
| So is a man’s fate born. | |
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| He cometh, reaper of the things he sow’d, | |
| Sesamum, corn, so much cast in past birth; | 10 |
| And so much weed and poison-stuff, which mar | |
| Him and the aching earth. | |
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| If he shall labor rightly, rooting these, | |
| And planting wholesome seedlings where they grew, | |
| Fruitful and fair and clean the ground shall be, | 15 |
| And rich the harvest due. | |
| |
| If he who liveth, learning whence woe springs, | |
| Endureth patiently, striving to pay | |
| His utmost debt for ancient evils done | |
| In Love and Truth alway; | 20 |
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| If making none to lack, he thoroughly purge | |
| The lie and lust of self forth from his blood; | |
| Suffering all meekly, rendering for offence | |
| Nothing but grace and good; | |
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| If he shall day by day dwell merciful, | 25 |
| Holy and just and kind and true; and rend | |
| Desire from where it clings with bleeding roots, | |
| Till love of life have end: | |
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| He—dying—leaveth as the sum of him | |
| A life-count clos’d, whose ills are dead and quit, | 30 |
| Whose good is quick and mighty, far and near, | |
| So that fruits follow it. | |
| |
| No need hath such to live as ye name life; | |
| That which began in him when he began | |
| Is finish’d: he hath wrought the purpose through | 35 |
| Of what did make him Man. | |
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| Never shall yearnings torture him, nor sins | |
| Stain him, nor ache of earthly joys and woes | |
| Invade his safe eternal peace; nor deaths | |
| And lives recur. He goes | 40 |
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| Unto NIRVÂNA. He is one with Life | |
| Yet lives not. He is blest, ceasing to be. | |
| OM, MANI PADME, OM! the Dewdrop slips | |
| Into the shining sea! | |
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