Go teach the common brotherhood of man.
Preach Dharma, preach the law of perfect love,
One law for high and low, for rich and poor.
Teach all to shun the cudgel and the sword,
And treat with kindness every living thing.
Teach them to shun all theft and craft and greed,
All bitter thoughts, and false and slanderous speech
That severs friends and stirs up strife and hate.
Revere your own, revile no brother's faith.
The light you see is from Nirvana's Sun,
Whose rising splendors promise perfect day.
The feeble rays that light your brother's path
Are from the selfsame Sun, by falsehoods hid,
The lingering shadows of the passing night.
Chide none with ignorance, but teach the truth
Gently, as mothers guide their infants' steps,
Lest your rude manners drive them from the way
That leads to purity and peace and rest--
As some rude swain in some sequestered vale,
Who thinks the visual line that girts him round
The world's extreme, would meet with sturdy blows
One rudely charging him with ignorance,
Yet gently led to some commanding height,
Whence he could see the Himalayan peaks,
The rolling hills and India's spreading plains,
With joyful wonder views the glorious scene.
Pause not to break the idols of the past.
Be guides and leaders, not iconoclasts.
Their broken idols shock their worshipers,
But led to light they soon forgotten lie."
One of their number, young and strong and brave,
A merchant ere he took the yellow robe,
Had crossed the frozen Himalayan heights
And found a race, alien in tongue and blood,
Gentle as children in their daily lives,
Untaught as children in all sacred things,
Living in wagons, wandering o'er the steppes,
To-day all shepherds, tending countless flocks,
To-morrow warriors, cruel as the grave,
Building huge monuments of human heads--
Fearless, resistless, with the cyclone's speed
Leaving destruction in their bloody track,
Who drove the Aryan from his native plains
To seek a home in Europe's trackless wastes.
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