had shared,
  Softened by sympathy and tender love,
  He taught how selfishness was primal cause
  Of every ill to which frail flesh is heir,
  The poisoned fountain whence all sorrows flow,
  The loathsome worm that coils about the root
  And kills the germ of every springing joy,
  The subtle foe that sows by night the tares
  That quickly springing choke the goodly seed
  Which left to grow would fill the daily life
  With balmy fragrance and with precious fruit. 
  He showed that selfishness was life’s sole bane
  And love its great and sovereign antidote. 
  He showed how selfishness would change the child
  From laughing innocence to greedy youth
  And heartless manhood, cold and cruel age,
  Which past the vale and stript of all disguise
  Shrinks from the good, and eager slinks away
  And seeks those dismal regions of the lost
  His opened eyes with sinking heart had seen. 
  Then showed how love its guardian angel paints
  Upon the cooing infant’s smiling face,
  Grows into gentle youth, and manhood rich
  In works of helpfulness and brotherhood,
  And ripens into mellow, sweet old age,
  Childhood returned with all its gentleness,
  Whose funeral-pile but lights the upward way
  To those sweet fields his opened eyes had seen,
  Those ever-widening mansions of delight.

  Enwrapt the teacher taught the living truth;
  Enwrapt the hearers heard his living words;
  The night unheeded winged its rapid flight,
  The morning found their souls from darkness free.

  Six yellow robes Benares daily saw,
  Six wooden alms-bowls held for daily food,
  Six meeting sneers with smiles and hate with love,
  Six watchers by the pilgrim’s dying bed,
  Six noble souls united in the work
  Of giving light and hope and help to all.

  A rich and noble youth, an only son,
  Had seen Gautama passing through the streets,
  A holy calm upon his noble face,
  Had heard him tell the pilgrims by the stream,
  Gasping for breath and breathing out their lives,
  Of higher life and joys that never end;
  And wearied, sated by the daily round
  Of pleasure, luxury and empty show
  That waste his days but fail to satisfy,
  Yet fearing his companions’ gibes and sneers,
  He sought the master in the sacred grove
  When the full moon was mirrored in the stream,
  The sleeping city silvered by its light;
  And there he lingered, drinking in his words,
  Till night was passed and day was well-nigh spent.

  The father, anxious for his absent son,
  Had sought him through the night from street to street
  In every haunt that youthful folly seeks,
  And now despairing sought the sacred grove—­
  Perhaps by chance, perhaps led by the light
  That guides the pigeon to her distant home—­
  And found him there.  He too the