Sri Aurobindo

Translations

CWSA.- Volume 5

Part One. Translations from Sanskrit
Section Four. Bhartrihari. The Century of Life

On Virtue

The High and Difficult Road

To give in secret as beneath a shroud;

To honour all who to thy threshold come;

Do good by stealth and of thy deeds be dumb,

But of another’s noble acts be proud

And vaunt them in the senate and the crowd;

To keep low minds in fortune’s arrogant day;

To speak of foemen without scorn or rage;

What finger appointed first this roughest way

Of virtue narrower than the falchion’s edge?