Note 6 — Chapter VIII

N.B.—I found in later years he had recently copied into this part of his journal, from some paper, "The Meditations of a Hindu Prince and Sceptic," by the author of "The Old Pindaree"—

"All the world over, I wonder, in lands that I never have trod, Are the people eternally seeking for the signs and steps of a God? Westward across the ocean, and Northward ayont the snow, Do they all stand gazing, as ever? and what do the wisest know? "Here, in this mystical India, the deities hover and swarm, Like the wild bees heard in the treetops, or the gusts of a gathering storm; In the air men hear their voices, their feet on the rocks are seen, Yet we all say, 'Whence is the message? and what may the wonders mean?' "Shall I list to the word of the English, who came from the uttermost sea? 'The secret, hath it been told you? and what is your message to me?' It is nought but the wide-world story how the earth and the heavens began; How the gods are glad and angry, and a Deity once a man. "I had thought, 'Perchance in the cities where the rulers of India dwell, Whose orders flash from the far land, who girdle the earth with a spell, They have fathomed the depths we float on, or measured the unknown main:' Sadly they turn from the venture, and say that the quest is vain. "Is life, then, a dream and delusion? and where shall the dreamer awake? Is the world seen like shadows on water? and what if the mirror break? Shall it pass, as a camp that is struck, as a tent that is gathered and gone, From the sands that were lamp-lit at eve, and at morning are level and lone? "Is there nought in the heavens above, whence the hail and the levin are hurled, But the wind that is swept around us by the rush of the rolling world?— The wind that shall scatter my ashes, and bear me to silence and sleep With the dirge, and the sounds of lamenting, and the voices of women who weep."