"Passing beyond the ills of infancy, the human being rises
into youth only to fall again. The lusts of life then take firm
hold of him and, helpless as the child put into trance with the
black crystal, he obeys their inspirations. Smiling for a brief
moment like the lightning, only too surely youth precedes the
groans of thunder and the tears of rain in age. Burning and
sweet and bitter all in one ; stained with sore sin, yet varnish-
ing its vice and hiding it under the paint of beauty ; this
passing flush of youth, like flush of wine, it has no charm for
me. Unstaying, like the city of the sands ; more evanescent
and more weird than dreams ; hollow at heart like mercenary
loves ; headstrong, muddy, and uncontrollable, like shallow
streams, swollen by slightest showers—such is the youth
bepraised by paltry wits. The reason that is rightest runs to
wrong beneath its sway. In its mad reign the mind that is
most pure, most placid, and most self-contained, o^erbreaks its
bounds, and y grows tumultuous and turbid and discoloured,
even as waters in the rains, howe'er transparent they had been
before.  Youth is a spreading forest, wherein dwells at ease
and ioams at will the mighty elephant of Abhimana(1), and
the snakes of sin infest the tangled undergrowths of the mind's
fancies in its depths. Youth is a lotus flower, pollened with
sensations that pall in the tasting, petalled with evil pranks
that lead to pain, beloved of the black bees of remorse and
care. Youth is an ocean, surging with the countless waves of
vice, amongst which there disport the myriad sharks of
ailments bodily and mental. More, far more difficult is it to
cross unwrecked this ocean, ithan the other ocean of mere
waters with all its storms and tempests and mischances.
They are the happy, they are the blessed, they are the Great
Ones to be worshipped, who have passed beyond its turmoils
(1) Prid e, arising from the sense of separateness, -which desires,
leads to a feeling of, superiority over others.