University of Virginia Library

THE BRAHMAN'S SON.

The Brahman's son was dead, the Brahman's heart
Stricken as if a thunder-bolt had fallen
Out of a clear sky, emptied of all light,
And suddenly black with midnight. Nevermore
Would life be what it had been, for the hand
That, reaching from the darkness, plucked the flower,
Plucked up by the roots the stem that bore the flower,
And dashed it down to die the self-same death.
It seemed so, for the aged Brahman thrice
Fainted upon the bosom of his son,
And each time longer coming back to life,
Sank deeper deathward. When he lay as dead
They took the body from his lifeless arms,
And having washed it in the sacred stream,
And wound it in the perfumed linen sheet,
Laid it upon a bier bestrown with flowers,
And bore it softly to the burial place.
When, lying there, the unhappy father woke
He knew that all was over, for the tears,
That had refused to flow, began to fall,
As after a long drought the summer rain.
Moreover he saw the elders of his caste,
Gray-beards who had no children, rating him
Because he sorrowed for his dear, dead child.
Stunned by their harsh reproofs, that smote his ear,
With words of commination, he was mute.
Driven hither by his sorrow for his son,
And thither by his duty to the gods,
To whom all sorrow, save what they inflict
By priestly hands for gifts withheld from them,
Is sin, the Brahman sought to overcome
The dark remembrance of his dreadful loss
By brooding over the Beneficence
Which fills the world with light, the night with stars,
By wisdom which the wisest of his caste
Proclaimed the only happiness of man,
But sought in vain, for all day long he saw
The face, the form, the presence of his child.
Turn where he would it was: indoors and out;
It went before him and it followed him,
Was at his scanty meals and at his prayers;
Rose when he rose at morning from his sleep,
And in the troubled watches of the night
Was with him in his dreams—a beauteous shape.
Haunted by memories he could not escape,
And grief that would not heal, the Brahman sighed:
“I am not—cannot be—like other men,
For having their dead, as I have, they forget,
While I remember; and not being wise—
No more than I am—they contrive to find
(They say so) wisdom, which I cannot find.
I will seek Yama, therefore, King of Death,
And pray him to give back my dear dead son.”
The Brahman straightway rose, and clothed himself
In the long vestments of his priestly caste,
And having performed the ceremonial rite,
And offered up the sacrificial flowers,
Went forth alone to seek the King of Death.
He questioned all he met where he might find
That lord of vanished kingdoms. Where is Death?
Some stared at him wide-eyed, but answered not,
Thinking him mad; some answered, mocking him;
And other some advised him to return,
Lest, sooner than he would, he should find Death.
Scarred soldiers riding by in mail cried out
That Death was in the rush of battle-storms,
Beneath the bursting of the arrow-clouds,
Amidst the lightning of the crossing swords,
Before the ranks of fighting elephants.
And swarthy sailors, swaggering in their cups,
Boisterous as stormy sea-winds, shouted, “Death
Is in the long waves roaring on the reefs,
And in the water-spouts of the mid-sea.”
And dancing girls, whose feet, like those of Spring,
Twinkled to music, and whose floating arms
Circled about their brows like flights of doves,
Sang, in the pauses of their amorous hymn,
“Not in the cold, dark caverns of the sea
Seek Death, nor in the dreadful battle-field,
But rather in our arms and on our lips,
Strained to our hearts in kisses: so to die—
No life is half so sweet as such a death.”
The rippling laughter of the merry girls
Was like the chime of bells on temple eaves
When winds of summer lip their silver tongues.
He wandered by the banks of many streams,
And in the shade of many city walls,
Until he came to the great wilderness
Below the holy Mountains of the East.
Dangerous the way was, for in forest paths
Were hooded serpents, pendent from the boughs,
With flickering, forked tongues; and, couchant near,
Leopards, the anger of whose cruel eyes
Flamed ominously through the jungle grass;
And, still more deadly, the enormous boa,
Whose tortuous passage through the furrowed weeds
Was like a boat's wake on the heaving sea.
Fearless he passed them: what had he to fear
From deaths like these who sought the King of Death?
At length he reached the harmless hermitage
Where dwelt the oldest Brahmans—holy men,
Reverend in their white hairs and drifts of beard.
The shadows of the ancient rocks and trees
Lengthened and shortened with the slow-paced hours,
And circled with the circling of the sun;
All, save the shadow of the sacred trees
Wherein they sat and mused, which circled not,
Steadfast as earth was in the shifting light.
They sat in silence, staring at the sun,
Not blinded by it, and the birds of heaven,
Seeing they stirred not, nestled in their beards.
Awed by the stern composure of their looks,
The Brahman stopped, like one who in a dream
Fears to go on, yet feels he must go on.
Then, bowing lowly to these holy men,
He said: “O Brahmans! Fathers of the caste,
As Brahma is the Father of the Gods,
Supreme in wisdom as the Gods are, hear,
And, hearing, help a most unhappy man
Who, worn with fruitless wanderings to and fro
In search of Yama, rajah of the dead,
Beseeches ye to tell him where he is:
Direct him, Fathers, to the King of Death.”
He spake, and waiting for their answer, heard
The humming of innumerable bees,
The inarticulate whisper of the leaves,
The rivers chanting their eternal song,
And in the distant woods the roar of beasts.
But now the Brahmans heard, or seemed to hear,
Like those whom voices overtake in sleep,
And, who, persuaded by the voices, wake,
Not knowing where they are, or who they are,
Pausing until their souls come back to them.
“What man art thou? And wherefore seekest thou
Yama, who comes unsought to every man?”
Few words sufficed to tell them what he was:
A Brahman (as they saw), but one to whom
The wisdom of his caste had not been given,
Though he had sought it long, with all his mind—
Sought it with fasts and prayers for threescore years.
Seeing (he said) that he was growing old,
And was not growing wise—a simple man
Who never could be wiser than he was—
He took a wife, as was his duty then,
To bear him holy children; she bare one,
A son, who was the comfort of his age.
Him did he dedicate to holiness,
Instilling at all hours in his young life
The love of wisdom, teaching all he knew,
Till, no more teaching, he was taught himself,
Fathered in knowledge by his wiser child.
“But he was taken from me in his bloom,
Taken with the dawn of manhood on his lip,
Taken without warning, leaving me alone!
Wherefore, I pray ye, Fathers, holy men,
Who, knowing all things, know where Yama dwells,
Tell me where I may find the King of Death,
That I may pray him to give back my son.”
They answered him together, with one voice,
As when the sounds of many swollen streams
Become one sound: “There is no giving back;
Death takes his own, and keeps it; takes all things.
The stars die in their courses, like the dew,
That shines, and is not; the containing heavens
Wither like leaves in autumn; all the worlds,
And all the creatures that inhabit them,
Vanish like smoke of incense—which they are,
From the beginning offered up to Death.
Thou canst not visit Yama's dread abode,
For no man goes that way with mortal feet.
But if thy faith be sure, thy courage high,
Thou mayst do one thing. Many a league from here,
Hundreds of leagues toward the setting sun,
There is a valley; in the midst of it
There stands a city, wherein dwells no man,
But the Gods only, when their pleasure is
To clothe themselves in shape, and live on earth.
There, when the eighth day of the month is come,
Comes Yama, from the dark realms of the dead,
To share the bright life of his brother Gods:
Go there, and there find Yama. Now depart:
We have heard and answered thy complaining words,
And earned the right to meditate again.”
Thus they, and silence followed, as when day
Dies in the purple west the birds fly home,
Forgetful of the songs they sang at dawn;
The leaves are hushed, the winds are laid, and night
Shuts suddenly, darkly in the starless sky.
Through sunlight, moonlight, starlight, like a cloud,
Driven by the strong wings of a steady wind
Whose speed is in his steps, the Brahman went
Hundreds of leagues toward the setting sun:
At last he reached the end of the world, and saw
The valley whereof the Fathers had foretold,
Immeasurable, and in the midst of it
The great and glorious City of the Gods.
A City builded in the summer clouds
By masonry of winds, fantastic, strange;
Tier over tier, in mountain terraces,
Sheer from the hollows of that happy vale,
It rose resplendent; leagues of palaces,
The sudden opening of whose doors disclosed
The light of thrones within; what temples seemed,
Interminable columns, crowned with domes;
Towers, wall-surrounded, high, mysterious;
Arches, wherethrough one saw the rise and fall
Of dazzling fountains in perpetual bloom;
Towers, temples, palaces, and over all
The great gate of the Palace of the Gods.
Beside the fiery pillars of this gate,
With folded wings, two watchful Spirits stood,
Guarding the entrance lest some evil thing
Should unperceived steal in; who, when they saw
The Brahman coming where his prayers had come
So long before him—for the prayers of men
Are ladders mounting from the earth to heaven—
They knew his life had been acceptable
To the high gods; and though he was the first
Who, without dying, ever came that way,
They stayed him not, such fearlessness of death
Was in his eyes, such certainty of life.
As when at set of sun on summer eves
The heavens are opened, and a single cloud,
Rising above the threshold of the west,
Pauses a moment, then is lost in light,
So paused the Brahman, till the golden gate
Unfolding slowly with melodious song—
If song it was, and not the spiritual touch
Of unseen hands on unknown instruments
That welcomed him—admitted him beyond,
There, where the Gods were in divine repose.
Not as where sculptured in colossal forms,
With fourfold faces, and with sceptred hands,
They sit crossed-legged, among their worshippers,
In tall pagodas, or in temple-caves
Quarried in mountains, ancient as themselves,
But Presences wherein the Power they were
Was felt, not seen: a sense of awfulness
Fell on the Brahman's soul, and closed his lips,
That would have uttered supplicating cries
To have his son restored, but dared not there.
From out the silence of that sacred Place—
But whether nigh at hand or far away,
From the great roof of brightness overhead
Or from the cavernous darkness in whose depths
The firm foundation of that world was set
From the beginning, who may say?—there came,
Or seemed to come, a low mysterious Voice:
“Thy prayers are answered. All the Gods can do
For man is done when they have heard his prayers
And answered them; the consequence of prayer,
Or good, or evil, must be borne by man:
The Gods are powerless to undo their work.
Thy son is in the Garden of the East.
Go to him; I permit it.” And he went,
Following he knew not how that heavenly Voice,
Sweeter than music on the sea at night,
But sadder than the moaning of the sea
When, pitying, it gives back the dead—too late!
Lovelier than all the gardens of the earth
It was—a region of eternal bloom:
Of flowers that, budding or full blown, were fresh
With lucent dews, whose bright leaves faded not,
Of fruits that, ripening on the laden boughs,
Dropped not, but hung all golden in the sun,
If sun it was whose mellow light was there—
An everlasting day! Like one in dreams,
Who bears about with him in unknown worlds
Remembrance of the only world he knows,
The unhappy Brahman wandered up and down,
Through groves of summer boscage blithe with birds,
And meadow hollows murmurous with bees;
Past sheets of still, clear water, islanded
With lily-pods—a Lotus Paradise,
And shafts of fountains flashing as they rose
In rainbow mists; past all, and saw them—
Saw nothing but his poor forsaken home
Beside the Ganges, and the mound of earth
That covered his dead boy, until, at last
The film passed from him, and he saw the boy,
More beauteous than on earth, though beauteous there,
Divinely fair—the same, but not the same.
Trembling, with outstretched hands, and a great cry,
He ran to him, and clasped him in his arms.
“Oh, my sweet boy! Oh, my beloved first-born
Hast thou forgot me, thy father? me,
Whose loving heart was broken at thy death?”
“I know thee not,” the soul of the dead child
Replied, escaping from his arms like mist.
“My son! my son! hast thou indeed forgot
Thy father, who loved thee more than his own life?
Who taught thy baby lips the words of prayer—
Deliverance from the power of Evil Ones,
And thanks for the protection of the Gods?
Hast thou forgot thy mother, who, like me,
Weeps, but alone, seeing that I am gone
From her on this long journey after thee?
O look at me! O come to me again!
And look at me, and thou wilt know me!” Still
The child came not, but said: “I know thee not:
Thou art a stranger to me. All I know
Is—that thou art a mortal, and not wise,
For wert thou wise, as we are, thou wouldst know
That ‘father,’ ‘mother,’ here are foolish names,
Belonging to conditions that are past.
Depart, unhappy one! I know thee not.
Thou art no more to me than to the moon
The wind that drives the clouds across her face,
The torch gone out at noonday. Get thee hence;
It profits not to bring thy sorrow here.”
The child, the garden—all things disappeared;
All save the Brahman, and the tears he shed:
Not long; for lifting up his eyes, he saw
Buddha before him, seated on his throne,
Godlike and human, merciful and wise,
With eyes that read the secrets of all hearts.
Pitying the father who had lost his child,
He stooped and laid his hand upon his heart,
And healing his long heart-ache, gave him peace.
“Brahman! thou hast been punished grievously
For understanding neither life nor death;
For knowing not the spirits of the dead
Receive new bodies after they are dead,
So that their late-left tenements of clay
Are no more to them than a wayside inn
To which as guests they never go again.
The ties of kindred—father, mother, child—
That seem to bind the world with bands of steel,
Are frailer when death comes than spiders' threads;
For death comes like a torrent from the hills,
Which swollen with ruin sweeps away all love,
And all love clings to with its dying hold.
Thy first, last duty, Brahman, is to live,
True to thyself and others; swerving not
From what the voice within pronounces good.
Who lives well, dies well.” So the Brahman found,
For he returned to earth, and wept no more;
But taking up the burden of his life,
He lived it out, and earned a quiet grave;
The thought of which, as he drew near to it,
Was a prophetic promise of his rest,
And of his bright Companion gone before,
Of whom his last words were—He knows me now!