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| ALL the world over, I wonder, in lands that I never have trod, | |
| Are the people eternally seeking for the signs and steps of a God? | |
| Westward across the ocean, and Northward across the snow, | |
| Do they all stand gazing, as ever, and what do the wisest know? | |
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| Here, in this mystical India, the deities hover and swarm | 5 |
| Like the wild bees heard in the treetops, or the gusts of a gathering storm; | |
| In the air men hear their voices, their feet on the rocks are seen, | |
| Yet we all say, “Whence is the message, and what may the wonders mean?” | |
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| A million shrines stand open, and ever the censer swings, | |
| As they bow to a mystic symbol, or the figures of ancient kings; | 10 |
| And the incense rises ever, and rises the endless cry | |
| Of those who are heavy laden, and of cowards loth to die. | |
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| For the Destiny drives us together, like deer in a pass of the hills; | |
| Above is the sky, and around us the sound of the shot that kills; | |
| Push’d by a power we see not, and struck by a hand unknown, | 15 |
| We pray to the trees for shelter, and press our lips to a stone. | |
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| The trees wave a shadowy answer, and the rock frowns hollow and grim, | |
| And the form and the nod of the demon are caught in the twilight dim; | |
| And we look to the sunlight falling afar on the mountain crest,— | |
| Is there never a path runs upward to a refuge there and a rest? | 20 |
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| The path, ah! who has shown it, and which is the faithful guide? | |
| The haven, ah! who has known it? for steep is the mountain side, | |
| Forever the shot strikes surely, and ever the wasted breath | |
| Of the praying multitude rises, whose answer is only death. | |
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| Here are the tombs of my kinsfolk, the fruit of an ancient name, | 25 |
| Chiefs who were slain on the war-field, and women who died in flame; | |
| They are gods, these kings of the foretime, they are spirits who guard our race: | |
| Ever I watch and worship; they sit with a marble face. | |
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| And the myriad idols around me, and the legion of muttering priests, | |
| The revels and rites unholy, the dark unspeakable feasts! | 30 |
| What have they wrung from the Silence? Hath even a whisper come | |
| Of the secret, Whence and Whither? Alas! for the gods are dumb. | |
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| Shall I list to the word of English, who come from the uttermost sea? | |
| “The Secret, hath it been told you, and what is your message to me?” | |
| It is nought but the wide-world story how the earth and the heavens began, | 35 |
| How the gods are glad and angry, and a Deity once was man. | |
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| I had thought, “Perchance in the cities where the rulers of India dwell, | |
| Whose orders flash from the far land, who girdle the earth with a spell, | |
| They have fathom’d the depths we float on, or measur’d the unknown main—” | |
| Sadly they turn from the venture, and say that the quest is vain. | 40 |
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| Is life, then, a dream and delusion, and where shall the dreamer awake? | |
| Is the world seen like shadows on water, and what if the mirror break? | |
| Shall it pass as a camp that is struck, as a tent that is gathered and gone | |
| From the sands that were lamp-lit at eve, and at morning are level and lone? | |
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| Is there nought in the heaven above, whence the hail and the levin are hurl’d, | 45 |
| But the wind that is swept around us by the rush of the rolling world? | |
| The wind that shall scatter my ashes, and bear me to silence and sleep | |
| With the dirge, and the sounds of lamenting, and voices of women who weep. | |
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