Here are the tombs of my kinsfolk, the first of an ancient name—
Chiefs who were slain on the war-field, and women who died in flame.
They are gods, these kings of the foretime, they are spirits who guard our race:
Ever I watch and worship—they sit with a marble face.
VIII.
And the myriad idols around me, and the legion of muttering priests—
The revels and rites unholy, the dark, unspeakable feasts—
What have they wrung from the silence? Hath even a Whisper come
Of the secret—whence and whither? Alas! for the gods are dumb.
Getting no light from the religious guides of his own country, he turns to the land where the English—the present rulers of India—dwell, and asks,
IX.
Shall I list to the word of the English, who come from the uttermost sea?
"The secret, hath it been told you? and what is your message to me?
It is naught but the wide-world story, how the earth and the heavens began—
How the gods are glad and angry, and a deity once was man.
And so he gathers around him the mantle of doubt and despondency; he asks if life is, after all, but a dream and delusion, while ever and ever is forced upon him that other question, "Where shall the dreamer awake?"
X.
I had thought, "Perchance in the cities where the rulers of India dwell,
Whose orders flash from the far land, who girdle the earth with a spell,
They have fathomed the depths we float on, or measured the unknown main—"
Sadly they turn from the venture, and say that the quest is vain.
XI.