THE KASÎDAH V, 101, 112

What call ye them or Goods or Ills,
 ill-goods, good-ills, a loss, a gain,
When realms arise and falls a roof;
 a world is won, a man is slain?

And thus the race of Being runs,
 till haply in the time to be
Earth shifts her pole and Mushtari-men
 another falling star shall see:

Shall see it fall and fade from sight,
 whence come, where gone no Thought can tell,—
Drink of yon mirage-stream and chase
 the tinkling of the camel-bell!

THE KASÎDAH IV, 1, 16

What Truths hath gleaned that Sage consumed
 by many a moon that waxt and waned?
What Prophet-strain be his to sing?
 What hath his old Experience gained?

There is no God, no man-made God;
 a bigger, stronger, crueller man;
Black phantom of our baby-fears,
 ere Thought, the life of Life, began.

Right quoth the Hindu Prince of old,
 “An Ishwara for one I nill,
Th’ almighty everlasting Good
 who cannot ’bate th’ Eternal Ill:”

“Your gods may be, what shows they are?”
 hear China’s Perfect Sage declare;
“And being, what to us be they
 who dwell so darkly and so far?”

THE KASÎDAH III, 137, 152

How sore the burden, strange the strife;
 how full of splendour, wonder, fear;
Life, atom of that Infinite Space
 that stretcheth ’twixt the Here and There.

How Thought is imp’otent to divine
 the secret which the gods defend,
The Why of birth and life and death,
 that Isis-veil no hand may rend.

Eternal Morrows make our Day;
 our Is is aye to be till when
Night closes in; ’tis all a dream,
 and yet we die,—and then and THEN?

And still the Weaver plies his loom,
 whose warp and woof is wretched Man
Weaving th’ unpattern’d dark design,
 so dark we doubt it owns a plan.