,
"If you to Gaya now direct your steps,
Perhaps your youth may cheer my lonely age."
"I go to seek for light," the prince replied,
"But where it matters not, so light be found."

But Mara answered him: "Your search is vain.
Why seek to know more than the Vedas teach?
Why seek to learn more than the teachers know?
But such is youth; the rosy tints of dawn
Tinge all his thoughts. 'Excelsior!' he cries,
And fain would scale the unsubstantial clouds
To find a light that knows no night, no change;
We Brahmans chant our hymns in solemn wise,
The vulgar listen with profoundest awe;
But still our muffled heart-throbs beat the march
Onward, forever onward, to the grave,
When one ahead cries, 'Lo! I see a light!'
And others clutch his garments, following on.
Till all in starless darkness disappear,
There may be day beyond this starless night,
There may be life beyond this dark profound--
But who has ever seen that changeless day?
What steps have e'er retraced that silent road?
Fables there are, hallowed by hoary age,
Fables and ancient creeds, that men have made
To give them power with ignorance and fear;
Fables of gods with human passions filled:
Fables of men who walked and talked with gods;
Fables of kalpas passed, when Brahma slept
And all created things were wrapped in flames,
And then the floods descended, chaos reigned,
The world a waste of waters, and the heavens
A sunless void, until again he wakes,
And sun and moon and stars resume their rounds,
Oceans receding show the mountain-tops,
And then the hills and spreading plains--
Strange fables all, that crafty men have feigned.
Why waste your time pursuing such vain dreams--
As some benighted travelers chase false lights
To lose themselves in bogs and fens at last?
But read instead in Nature's open book
How light from darkness grew by slow degrees;
How crawling worms grew into light-winged birds,
Acquiring sweetest notes and gayest plumes;
How lowly ferns grew into lofty palms;
How men have made themselves from chattering apes;[2]
How, even from protoplasm to highest bard,
Selecting and rejecting, mind has grown,
Until at length all secrets are unlocked,
And man himself now stands pre-eminent,
Maker and master of his own great self,
To sneer at all his lisping childlike past
And laugh at all his fathers had revered."

The prince with gentle earnestn