Then to test him the Great Being spoke the first stanza:

All other birds, heedless of me, have fled in haste away;
What friendship can a captive know? Be off, make no delay.

Here moreover followed these stanzas :

Whether I go or stay with thee, I still some day must die:
I've courted thee in weal, in woe from thee I may not fly.

I either then must die with thee, or live a life forlorn,
Far better 'twere to die at once than live thy loss to mourn.

It is not right to leave thee, sire, in such a sorry state;
Nay, I am well content to share whate'er may be thy fate.

What fate for one caught in a snare except the cruel spit?
How in thy senses and still free couldst thou to this submit?

What good for thee or me, O bird, herein dost thou descry,
Or for the kin surviving us, if both of us should die?

Wrapt, golden-winged one, in night will be thy deed of worth;
What moral would such sacrifice, if brought to light, show forth?

That blessings follow Right, O king of birds, dost thou not see?
Right duly honoured shows to men what their true good may be.

[340] Seeing the Right and all the Good that still from Right may spring,
For love of thee I cheerfully my life away would fling.

If mindful of the Right one ne'er forsakes a suffering friend,
Not e'en to save one's life, such act as Right the wise commend.

Thy duty nobly done, the while I recognise thy love,
Depart at once, if thou wouldst do the thing I most approve.

Perhaps in time the ties that bound my kin beneath my sway,
With fuller knowledge and control may pass to thee some day.

As thus these noble birds exchanged high thoughts, to them, behold,
Like Death to some bedridden wretch appeared this fowler bold.

The friends in him discerning well the enemy they fear,
Long silent sat and motionless, as he to them drew near.

Seeing the geese rise here and there and vanish into space,
Their foe, where sat these noble birds, in haste approached the place.

And as he ran with utmost speed and reached the fated spot,
The fowler, trembling at the thought, cried, "Are they caught or not?"

The one he saw caught in the snare, the other bird he found
Watching his captive friend, himself unfettered and unbound.

Perplexed and doubting in his mind he viewed the noble pair,
--Full grown were they, two comely birds--and thus he spake them fair.

Granted that one caught in a snare may never fly away ,
Why, mighty bird, dost thou, still free, resolve with him to stay?

What is this fowl to thee, that when the rest are fled and gone,
Though free, beside the captive bird thou sittest here alone?

0 foe of birds, my friend and king, dear as my life is he;
Forsake him--no, I never will, until Death calls for me.