"Write, Chitragupta!* Enter up your reckoning!
Yum** awaits in anger the assessment of the dead!
We left a law of kindness,
But they bowed themselves in blindness
To a cruelty consummate and a mystery instead!

"'Write, Chitragupta! Once we sang and danced with them.
Now in gloomy temples they lay foreheads in the dust!
To us they looked for pleasure
And we never spared the measure
Till they set their priests between us and we left them in disgust.

"Fun and mirth we made for them (write it, Chitragupta!
Set it down in symbols for the awful eye of Yum!)
But they traded fun for fashion
And their innocence for passion,
Till they murmur in their wallow now the consequences come!

"Look! Look and wonder how the simple folk are out of it!
Empirics are the teachers and the liars leading men!
We were generous and free -
Aye, a social lot were we,
But they took to priests instead of us, and trouble started then!"

[* In Hindu mythology Yum is the judge of the dead and Chitragupta
writes the record for him.]


"Peace, Maharajah sahib! Out of anger came no wise counsel yet!"