Sinks in the west, and with new glory gilds The mountain-tops, the clouds and western sky, And calls all nature to refreshing sleep. If he be God, the useful are like God; If not, God made the sun, who made all men And by his great example teaches them The diligent are wise, the useful good." Sorely perplexed he called his counselors, Grown gray in serving their beloved king, And said: "Friends of my youth, manhood and age, So wise in counsel and so brave in war, Who never failed in danger or distress, Oppressed with fear, I come to you for aid. You know the prophecies, that from my house Shall come a king, or savior of the world. You saw strange signs precede Siddartha's birth, And saw the ancient sage whom no one knew Fall down before the prince, and hail my house. You heard him tell the queen she soon would die, And saw her sink in death as in sweet sleep; You laid her gently on her funeral pile, And heard my cry of anguish, when the sage Again appeared and bade me not to weep For her as dead who lived and loved me still. We saw the prince grow up to man's estate, So strong and full of manliness and grace, And wise beyond his teachers and his years, And thought in him the prophecies fulfilled, And that with glory he would rule the world And bless all men with universal peace. But now dark shadows fall athwart our hopes. Often in sleep the prince will start and cry As if in pain, 'O world, sad world, I come!' But roused, he'll sometimes sit the livelong day, Forgetting teachers, sports and even food, As if with dreadful visions overwhelmed, Or buried in great thoughts profound and deep. But yet to see our people, riding forth, 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,