The Poetical Works of John Payne Definitive Edition in Two Volumes |
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SARVARTHASIDDHA-BUDDHA. |
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 | The Poetical Works of John Payne |  |
SARVARTHASIDDHA-BUDDHA.
THE desert of the unaccomplished years
Fills the round compass of our careful eyes
And still, from age to age, the same suns rise
And life troops past, a masque of smiles and tears:
The same void hopes vie with the same vain fears
And in the grey sad circuit of the skies,
To the monotonous music of our sighs,
We plod toward the goal that never nears.
Ah, who shall solve us of the dreary days,
The unlived life and the tormenting dreams,
That on the happy blank of easeful night
Paint evermore for us the backward ways
And the old mirage, with its cheating streams,
And urge us back into the unwon fight?
Fills the round compass of our careful eyes
And still, from age to age, the same suns rise
And life troops past, a masque of smiles and tears:
The same void hopes vie with the same vain fears
And in the grey sad circuit of the skies,
To the monotonous music of our sighs,
We plod toward the goal that never nears.
183
The unlived life and the tormenting dreams,
That on the happy blank of easeful night
Paint evermore for us the backward ways
And the old mirage, with its cheating streams,
And urge us back into the unwon fight?
We turn for comfort to the wise of old,
For tidings of the land that lies ahead,
The land to which their firmer feet have led,
Hymning its shores of amethyst and gold.
We ask; the answer comes back stern and cold;
“Gird up your loins! Rest is not for the dead.
“Beyond the graveyard and the evening-red,
“New lives and ever yet new lives unfold.”
—Ye speak in vain. If rest be not from life,
What reck we of new worlds and clearer air,
Of brighter suns and skies of deeper blue,
If life and all its weariness be there?
Is there no sage of all we turn unto
Will guide us to the guerdon of our strife?
For tidings of the land that lies ahead,
The land to which their firmer feet have led,
Hymning its shores of amethyst and gold.
We ask; the answer comes back stern and cold;
“Gird up your loins! Rest is not for the dead.
“Beyond the graveyard and the evening-red,
“New lives and ever yet new lives unfold.”
—Ye speak in vain. If rest be not from life,
What reck we of new worlds and clearer air,
Of brighter suns and skies of deeper blue,
If life and all its weariness be there?
Is there no sage of all we turn unto
Will guide us to the guerdon of our strife?
Yes, there is one: for the sad sons of man,
That languish in the deserts, travail-worn,
Five times five hundred years ago was born,
Under those Orient skies, from whence began
All light, a saviour from the triple ban
Of birth and death and life renewed forlorn.
Third of the Christs he came to those who mourn:
Prometheus, Hercules had led the van.
His scriptures were the forest and the fen:
From the dead flower he learnt and the spent night
The lesson of the eternal nothingness,
How what is best is ceasing from the light
And putting off life's raiment of duresse,
And taught it to the weary race of men.
That languish in the deserts, travail-worn,
Five times five hundred years ago was born,
Under those Orient skies, from whence began
All light, a saviour from the triple ban
Of birth and death and life renewed forlorn.
Third of the Christs he came to those who mourn:
Prometheus, Hercules had led the van.
His scriptures were the forest and the fen:
From the dead flower he learnt and the spent night
The lesson of the eternal nothingness,
How what is best is ceasing from the light
And putting off life's raiment of duresse,
And taught it to the weary race of men.
184
He did not mock the battle-broken soul
With promise of vain heavens beyond the tomb,
As who should think to break the boding gloom
Of stormful skies, uplifting to the pole
Gilt suns and tinsel stars. Unto their dole,
Who batten on life's galls, he knew no doom
Is dread as that which in death's darkling womb
Rewrites life's endless and accurséd scroll.
Wherefore he taught that to abstain is best,
Seeing that to those, who have their hope in nought,
Peace quicklier comes and that eternal rest,
Wherein enspheréd thou, Siddartha, art,
Chief of the high sad souls that sit apart,
Throned in their incommunicable thought.
With promise of vain heavens beyond the tomb,
As who should think to break the boding gloom
Of stormful skies, uplifting to the pole
Gilt suns and tinsel stars. Unto their dole,
Who batten on life's galls, he knew no doom
Is dread as that which in death's darkling womb
Rewrites life's endless and accurséd scroll.
Wherefore he taught that to abstain is best,
Seeing that to those, who have their hope in nought,
Peace quicklier comes and that eternal rest,
Wherein enspheréd thou, Siddartha, art,
Chief of the high sad souls that sit apart,
Throned in their incommunicable thought.
| The Poetical Works of John Payne | |