The Light of Asia. Sir Edwin Arnold

in its own ivory cup.

       And night and day served there a chosen band

       Of nautch girls, cup-bearers, and cymballers,

       Delicate, dark-browed ministers of love,

       Who fanned the sleeping eyes of the happy Prince,

       And when he waked, led back his thoughts to bliss

       With music whispering through the blooms, and charm

       Of amorous songs and dreamy dances, linked

       By chime of ankle-bells and wave of arms

       And silver vina-strings; while essences

       Of musk and champak and the blue haze spread

       From burning spices soothed his soul again

       To drowse by sweet Yasodhara; and thus

       Siddartha lived forgetting.

       Furthermore,

       The King commanded that within those walls

       No mention should be made of death or age,

       Sorrow, or pain, or sickness. If one drooped

       In the lovely Court—her dark glance dim, her feet

       Faint in the dance—the guiltless criminal

       Passed forth an exile from that Paradise,

       Lest he should see and suffer at her woe.

       Bright-eyed intendants watched to execute

       Sentence on such as spake of the harsh world

       Without, where aches and plagues were, tears

       and fears,

       And wail of mourners, and grim fume of pyres.

       `T was treason if a thread of silver strayed

       In tress of singing-girl or nautch-dancer;

       And every dawn the dying rose was plucked,

       The dead leaves hid, all evil sights removed

       For said the King, "If he shall pass his youth

       Far from such things as move to wistfulness,

       And brooding on the empty eggs of thought,

       The shadow of this fate, too vast for man,

       May fade, belike, and I shall see him grow

       To that great stature of fair sovereignty

       When he shall rule all lands—if he will rule—

       The King of kings and glory of his time."

       Wherefore, around that pleasant prison house

       Where love was gaoler and delights its bars,

       But far removed from sight—the King bade build

       A massive wall, and in the wall a gate

       With brazen folding-doors, which but to roll

       Back on their hinges asked a hundred arms;

       Also the noise of that prodigious gate

       Opening was heard full half a yojana.

       And inside this another gate he made,

       And yet within another—through the three

       Must one pass if he quit that pleasure-house.

       Three mighty gates there were, bolted and barred,

       And over each was set a faithful watch;

       And the King's order said, "Suffer no man

       To pass the gates, though he should be the Prince

       This on your lives—even though it be my son."