Then spoke a twice-passed Brahman,[[21]] Kapila by name, 'O Kaundinya! thou dost forget thyself to lament thus. Hear what is written—
'Weep not! Life the hired nurse is, holding us a little space;
Death, the mother who doth take us back into our proper place.'
'Gone, with all their gauds and glories: gone, like peasants, are the Kings,
Whereunto the world is witness, whereof all her record rings.'
What, indeed, my friend, is this mortal frame, that we should set store by it?—
'For the body, daily wasting, is not seen to waste away,
Until wasted, as in water set a jar of unbaked clay.'
'And day after day man goeth near and nearer to his fate,
As step after step the victim thither where its slayers wait.'
Friends and kinsmen—they must all be surrendered! Is it not said—
'Like as a plank of drift-wood
Tossed on the watery main,
Another plank encountered,
Meets—touches—parts again;
So tossed, and drifting ever,
On life's unresting sea,
Men meet, and greet, and sever,
Parting eternally.'
Thou knowest these things, let thy wisdom chide thy sorrow, saying—
'Halt, traveller! rest i' the shade: then up and leave it!
Stay, Soul! take fill of love; nor losing, grieve it!'
But in sooth a wise man would better avoid love; for—
'Each beloved object born
Sets within the heart a thorn,
Bleeding, when they be uptorn.'