Reply: mankind obeys a law that bids him labour, struggle, strain; The Sage well knowing its unworth, the Fool a-dreaming foolish gain. And who, ’mid e’en the Fools, but feels that half the joy is in the race For wealth and fame and place, nor sighs when comes success to crown the chase? Again: in Hind, Chîn, Franguestân that accident of birth befell, Without our choice, our will, our voice: Faith is an accident as well. What to the Hindu saith the Frank: “Denier of the Laws divine! “However godly-good thy Life, Hell is the home for thee and thine.” “Go strain the draught before ’tis drunk, and learn that breathing every breath, “With every step, with every gest, something of life thou do’est to death.” Replies the Hindu: “Wend thy way for foul and foolish Mlenchhas fit; “Your Pariah-par’adise woo and win; at such dog-Heav’en I laugh and spit.” “Cannibals of the Holy Cow! who make your rav’ening maws the grave “Of Things with self-same right to live;— what Fiend the filthy license gave?” What to the Moslem cries the Frank? “A polygamic Theist thou! “From an imposter-Prophet turn; Thy stubborn head to Jesus bow.” Rejoins the Moslem: “Allah’s one tho’ with four Moslemahs I wive, “One-wife-men ye and (damnèd race!) you split your God to Three and Five.” The Buddhist to Confucians thus: “Like dogs ye live, like dogs ye die; “Content ye rest with wretched earth; God, Judgment, Hell ye fain defy.” Retorts the Tartar: “Shall I lend mine only ready-money ‘now,’ “For vain usurious ‘Then’ like thine, avaunt, a triple idiot Thou!” “With this poor life, with this mean world I fain complete what in me lies; “I strive to perfect this my me; my sole ambition’s to be wise.” When doctors differ who decides amid the milliard-headed throng? Who save the madman dares to cry: “’Tis I am right, you all are wrong?” “You all are right, you all are wrong,” we hear the careless Soofi say, “For each believes his glimm’ering lamp to be the gorgeous light of day.” “Thy faith why false, my faith why true? ’tis all the work of Thine and Mine, “The fond and foolish love of self that makes the Mine excel the Thine.” Cease then to mumble rotten bones; and strive to clothe with flesh and blood The skel’eton; and to shape a Form that all shall hail as fair and good. “For gen’erous youth,” an Arab saith, “Jahim’s* the only genial state; “Give us the fire but not the shame with the sad, sorry blest to mate.” * Jehannum, Gehenna, Hell. And if your Heav’en and Hell be true, and Fate that forced me to be born Force me to Heav’en or Hell—I go, and hold Fate’s insolence in scorn. I want not this, I want not that, already sick of Me and Thee; And if we’re both transform’d and changed, what then becomes of Thee and Me?