"Who in your house of kindly heart shall be
Is kindly still though far across the sea:
Who in your house shall hostile be of heart,
Hostile he is though ocean-wide apart.

"Thy foes, O lord of chariots! though near thee, are afar:
But, fosterer of thy realm! the good in heart close linked are.

"Who stay too long, find oftentimes that friend is changed to foe;
Then ere I lose your friendship, I will take my leave, and go."

[218] Then the king said to him:

"Though I with folded hands beseech, you will not give me ear;
You spare no word for us, to whom your service would be dear
I crave one favour: come again and pay a visit here."

Then the Bodhisatta said:

"If nothing comes to snap our life, O king! if you and I
Still live, O fosterer of thy folk! perhaps I'll hither fly,
And we may see each other yet, as days and nights go by."

With this address to the king, the Great Being departed to Cittakuta.

When the Master had ended this discourse, he said: "Thus, Brethren, long ago, even when I was born as one of the animals, I showed the frailty of all life's elements, and declared the Truth." So saying, he identified the Birth: "At that time Ananda was the king, Moggallana was the youngest bird, Sariputta was the second, the Buddha's followers were all Geese of the flock, and I myself was the swift Goose."

Footnotes

^132:1 A mode of coming into existence all of a sudden, without the natural processes.

^133:1 One of the seven great ranges that surround Mount Meru.

^134:1 The meaning is, the bird circled so fast over it as to give the appearance of a canopy. So on p. 133 of the "golden mat."

^135:1 Reading agantva in line 4.

^135:2 These two couplets occur again in No. 478 (p. 141).