Читать книгу Many Gods - Rice Cale Young - Страница 8

All night long the pagoda slave

Hears the wind-bells high in the air

Tinkle with low sweet tongue and grave

In praise of Lord Gautama.

All night long where the lone spire sends

Its golden height to the starry light

He hears their tune

And watches the moon

And fears he shall never reach Nirvana.

Round and round by a hundred shrines

Glittering at the great Shwe's base

Falls the sound of his feet mid lines

Droned from the sacred Wisdom.

Round and round where the idols gaze

So pitiless on his pained distress

He passes on,

Pale-eyed and wan —

A pariah like the dogs behind him.

Oh, what sin in a life begot

Thousands of lives ago did he sin

That he is now by all forgot,

Even by Lord Gautama?

Oh, what sin, that the lowest shun

His very name as a thing of shame —

A sound to taint

The winds that faint

From the high bells that hear it uttered!

Midnight comes and the hours of morn,

Tapers die and the flowers all

From the most fêted altars: lorn

And desolate is their odour.

Midnight goes, but he watches still

By each cold spire the moon sets fire,

By every palm

Whose silvery calm

Pillar and jewelled porch pray under.

Is it dawn that is breaking?.. No,

Only a star that falls in the sea,

Only a wind-bell's louder flow

Of praise to Lord Gautama.

Faithless dawn! with illusive feet

It comes too late to ease his fate.

He sinks asleep

A helpless heap,

Tho for it he may never reach Nirvana.