Quiz

Where is this passage from ?

Men call the Aswattha, - the Banyan-tree, Which hath its boughs beneath, its roots on high, The ever-holy tree. Yea! for its leaves Are green and waving hymns which whisper Truth! Who knoweth well the Aswattha, knows all.

Its branches shoot to heaven and sink to earth, Even as the deeds of men, which take their birth From qualities: its silver sprays and blooms, And all the eager verdure of its girth,Leap to quick life at touch of sun and air, As men's lives quicken to the temptings fair Of wooing sense: its hanging rootlets seek The soil beneath, helping to hold it there, As actions wrought amid this world of men Bind them by ever-tightening bonds again. If ye knew well the teaching of the Tree, What its shape saith; and whence it springs; and, then

How it must end, and all the ills of it, The axe of sharp Detachment ye would whet, And cleave the clinging snaky roots, and lay This Aswattha of sense-like low, - to set

New growths upspringing to that happier sky, Which they who reach shall have no day to die, Nor fade away, nor fall - to Him, I mean, Father and First, Who made the mystery

Of old Creation; for to Him come they From passion and from dreams who break away; Who part the bonds constraining them to flesh, And, - Him, the Highest, worshipping alway

No longer grow at mercy of what breeze Of summer pleasure stirs the sleeping trees, What blast of tempest tears them, bough and stem To the eternal world pass such as these!