The good scarce need, the bad will scorn, my aid;
But these poor souls will gladly welcome help.
Welcome to me the scorn of rich and great,
Welcome the Brahman's proud and cold disdain,
Welcome revilings from the rabble rout,
If I can lead some groping souls to light--
If I can give some weary spirits rest.
Farewell, my brother, you have earned release--
Rest here in peace. I go to aid the poor."
And as he spoke a flash of lurid light
Shot through the air, and Buddha stood alone--
Alone! to teach the warring nations peace!
Alone! to lead a groping world to light!
Alone! to give the heavy-laden rest!
[1]A sakwal was a sun with its system of worlds, which the ancient
Hindoos believed extended one beyond another through infinite space.
It indicates great advance in astronomical knowledge when such a
complex idea, now universally received as true, as that the fixed stars
are suns with systems of worlds like ours, could be expressed in a
single word.
[2]It may seem like an anachronism to put the very words of the modern
agnostic into the mouth of Buddha's tempter, but these men are merely
threshing over old straw. The sneer of Epicurus curled the lip of
Voltaire, and now merely breaks out into a broad laugh on the
good-natured face of Ingersoll.
[3]The Sanscrit, the most perfect of all languages, and the mother of
Greek and of all the languages of the Aryan races, now spread over the
world, had gone out of use in Buddha's time, and the Pali, one of its
earliest offspring, was used by the great teacher and his people.
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