Whom I could save! How can it be that Brahm Would make a world and keep it miserable, Since, if all-powerful, he leaves it so, He is not good, and if not powerful, He is not God?--Channa! lead home again! It is enough I mine eyes have seen enough!" Which when the King heard, at the gates he set A triple guard, and bade no man should pass By day or night, issuing or entering in, Until the days were numbered of that dream. Book The Fourth But when the days were numbered, then befell The parting of our Lord--which was to be-- Whereby came wailing in the Golden Home, Woe to the King and sorrow o'er the land, But for all flesh deliverance, and that Law Which whoso hears, the same shall make him free. Softly the Indian night sinks on the plains At full moon in the month of Chaitra Shud, When mangoes redden and the asoka buds Sweeten the breeze, and Rama's birthday comes, And all the fields are glad and all the towns. Softly that night fell over Vishramvan, Fragrant with blooms and jewelled thick with stars, And cool with mountain airs sighing adown From snow-flats on Himala high-outspread; For the moon swung above the eastern peaks, Climbing the spangled vault, and lighting clear Robini's ripples and the hills and plains, And all the sleeping land, and near at hand Silvering those roof-tops of the pleasure-house, Where nothing stirred nor sign of watching was, Save at the outer gates, whose warders cried Mudra, the watchword, and the countersign Angana, and the watch-drums beat a round; Whereat the earth lay still, except for call Of prowling jackals, and the ceaseless trill Of crickets on the garden grounds.