But Krishna said (For, by some sense of disadvantage stung, He took reprisals of his gentle sort): "What if I could not name them? What if they, Concerned less to survive themselves in fame, Mere empty wraiths of sound to mortal ears In futile issues of dissolving breath, Repeated echoes of unmeaning names-- What if, I say, concerned less so to be Vainly themselves remembered for a day Than to keep living for the use of men The saving truths their master Buddha taught, Those saints and sages of the elder time Let themselves perish quite from human thought?" But Publius interposed, insisting, fain To show some ground of reason in his mind, Beyond mere curiosity for words, Why he desired to know those ancient names. "Yet were it some support," he said, "to faith In those same saving truths as truly saved Themselves for men, after so long a term Of vagabondage (to take up thy word), Of vagabondage and of mendicancy-- The fourth part of a thousand years consumed In flying forward hither from mouth to mouth--" So far, uncertain of his way, he groped; Bethinking then himself of one more chance, That might be, of the proof he sought, he said: "And still, O Krishna, if those nameless ones, Deserving well to be not nameless, nay, Of far-renownéd name; nor less, but more, Deserving that they waived their own desert; If these--nobly not mindful whether they Remembered or forgotten were of men, Yet heedful not to let the coming time Fail of the truth that they themselves had found So dear, or dwell in any needless doubt Of its just phrase--committed at the last The task of fixing it in written form To some illustrious man who would consent To forego for himself his choice of being Obscure, unknown to aftertime, and lend The great weight of his name to the result, For satisfaction to inquiring souls-- Why, that were much, indeed perhaps enough, And I before required beyond my right."