And here arrived, the good, in little groups
  Together drawn by inward sympathy,
  And led by devas, take the upward way
  To those sweet fields his opened eyes had seen,
  Those ever-widening mansions of delight;
  While those poor souls—­O sad and fearful sight!—­
  The very well-springs of the life corrupt,
  Shrink from the light and shun the pure and good,
  Fly from the devas, who with perfect love
  Would gladly soothe their anguish, ease their pain,
  Fly on and down that broad and beaten road,
  Till in the distance in the darkness lost. 
  Lost! lost! and must it be forever lost? 
  The gentle Buddha’s all-embracing love
  Shrunk from the thought, but rather sought relief
  In that most ancient faith by sages taught,
  That these poor souls at length may find escape,
  The grasping in the gross and greedy swine,
  The cunning in the sly and prowling fox,
  The cruel in some ravening beast of prey;
  While those less hardened, less depraved, may gain
  Rebirth in men, degraded, groveling, base.[1]

  But here in sadness let us drop the veil,
  Hoping that He whose ways are not like ours,
  Whose love embraces all His handiwork,
  Who in beginnings sees the final end,
  May find some way to save these sinful souls
  Consistent with His fixed eternal law
  That good from good, evil from evil flows.

  Here Buddha saw the mystery of life
  At last unfolded to its hidden depths. 
  He saw that selfishness was sorrow’s root,
  And ignorance its dense and deadly shade;
  He saw that selfishness bred lust and hate,
  Deformed the features, and defiled the soul
  And closed its windows to those waves of love
  That flow perennial from Nirvana’s Sun. 
  He saw that groveling lusts and base desires
  Like noxious weeds unchecked luxurious grow,
  Making a tangled jungle of the soul,
  Where no good seed can find a place to root,
  Where noble purposes and pure desires
  And gentle thoughts wither and fade and die
  Like flowers beneath the deadly upas-tree. 
  He saw that selfishness bred grasping greed,
  And made the miser, made the prowling thief,
  And bred hypocrisy, pretense, deceit,
  And made the bigot, made the faithless priest,
  Bred anger, cruelty, and thirst for blood,
  And made the tyrant, stained the murderer’s knife,
  And filled the world with war and want and woe,
  And filled the dismal regions of the lost
  With fiery flames of passions never quenched,
  With sounds of discord, sounds of clanking chains,
  With cries of anguish, howls of bitter hate,
  Yet saw that man was free—­not bound and chained[2]
  Helpless and hopeless to a whirling wheel,
  Rolled on resistless by some cruel power,
  Regardless of their cries and prayers and tears—­
  Free to resist those gross and groveling