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Title: The Pagoda Slave
Author: Cale Young Rice [
More Titles by Rice]
(At Shwe Dagohn, in old Rangoon)
All night long the pagoda slave
Hears the wind-bells high in the air
Tinkle with low sweet tongue and grave
In praise of Lord Gautama.
All night long where the lone spire sends
Its golden height to the starry light
He hears their tune
And watches the moon
And fears he shall never reach Nirvana.
Round and round by a hundred shrines
Glittering at the great Shwe's base
Falls the sound of his feet mid lines
Droned from the sacred Wisdom.
Round and round where the idols gaze
So pitiless on his pained distress
He passes on,
Pale-eyed and wan--
A pariah like the dogs behind him.
Oh, what sin in a life begot
Thousands of lives ago did he sin
That he is now by all forgot,
Even by Lord Gautama?
Oh, what sin, that the lowest shun
His very name as a thing of shame--
A sound to taint
The winds that faint
From the high bells that hear it uttered!
Midnight comes and the hours of morn,
Tapers die and the flowers all
From the most feted altars: lorn
And desolate is their odour.
Midnight goes, but he watches still
By each cold spire the moon sets fire,
By every palm
Whose silvery calm
Pillar and jewelled porch pray under.
Is it dawn that is breaking?... No,
Only a star that falls in the sea,
Only a wind-bell's louder flow
Of praise to Lord Gautama.
Faithless dawn! with illusive feet
It comes too late to ease his fate.
He sinks asleep
A helpless heap,
Tho for it he may never reach Nirvana.
[The end]
Cale Young Rice's poem: Pagoda Slave
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