Intrinsic unselfishness and abstract goodness is older than the Gospel, the Koran, the Veda, or any other religious book. Being at the very core of that civilization from which all changes spring, it is in itself eternally unchangeable, be it clothed in the words of the Sermon on the Mount, the Prophet Mohammed’s three great principles of Compassion, Charity, and Resignation, or the famed edict of the Emperor Asoka, who many centuries before the days of Jesus declared to the world that “a man must not do reverence to his own sect by disparaging that of another man.”
THE SHROUD
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Death, I say, my heart is bowed
Unto thine,—O mother!
This red gown will make a shroud
Good as any other!
(I, that would not wait to wear
My own bridal things,
In a dress dark as my hair