’A wise man for an object’s sake
    His foe upon his back will take,
    As with the Frogs once did the Snake.’

‘How was that?’ asked the Peacock-King.  The Crow related:—­

THE STORY OF THE FROGS AND THE OLD SERPENT

“In a deserted garden there once lived a Serpent, ‘Slow-coil’ by name; who had reached an age when he was no longer able to obtain his own food.  Lying listlessly by the edge of a pond, he was descried by a certain Frog, and interrogated—­

‘Have you given up caring for food, Serpent?’

‘Leave me, kindly Sir,’ replied the subtle reptile; ’the griefs of a miserable wretch like me cannot interest your lofty mind.’

‘Let me at least hear them,’ said the Frog, somewhat flattered.

‘You must know, then, gracious Sir,’ began the Serpent, ’that it is now twenty years since here, in Brahmapoora, I bit the son of Kaundinya, a holy Brahman; of which cruel bite he died.  Seeing his boy dead, Kaundinya abandoned himself to despair, and grovelled in his distress upon the ground.  Thereat came all his kinsmen, citizens of Brahmapoora, and sat down with him, as the manner is—­

    ’He who shares his brother’s portion, be he beggar, be he lord,
    Comes as truly, comes as duly, to the battle as the board;

Stands before the King to succor, follows to the pile to sigh;
He is friend and he is kinsman—­less would make the name a lie.’

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—­