To their acclaims he answers with such grace
And gentle stateliness, my heart would swell
As I would hear the people to each other say;
'Who ever saw such grace and grandeur joined?'
Yet while he answers gladness with like joy,
His eyes seem searching for the sick and old,
The poor, and maimed, and blind--all forms of grief,
And oft he'd say, tears streaming from his eyes,[13]
'Let us return; my heart can bear no more.'
One day we saw beneath a peepul-tree
An aged Brahman, wasted with long fasts,
Loathsome with self-inflicted ghastly wounds,
A rigid skeleton, standing erect,
One hand stretched out, the other stretched aloft,
His long white beard grown filthy by neglect.
Whereat the prince with shuddering horror shook,
And cried, 'O world! must I be such for thee?'
And once he led the chase of a wild boar
In the great forest near the glacier's foot;
On Kantaka so fleet he soon outstripped
The rest, and in the distance disappeared.
But when at night they reached the rendezvous,
Siddartha was not there; and through the night
They searched, fearing to find their much loved prince
A mangled corpse under some towering cliff,
But searched in vain, and searched again next day,
Till in despair they thought to bring me word
The prince was lost, when Kantaka was seen
Loose-reined and free, and near Siddartha sat
Under a giant cedar's spreading shade.