Verse 1

¹Seeing kings so taken up with the conquest of her own self, this earth laughs at them: look, she says, how these kings, the playthings of death, want to conquer me. ²This wanting of theirs, in the lords of men, would come to nothing even in the learned: for the kings put such trust in a lump of a body like foam. ³First we will beat the band of six, then the king's counsellors; then his ministers, his townsmen, his allies, his great elephants, all the thorns of him. ⁴So, step by step, we will conquer the earth belted by the sea. Their hearts tied up with hoping like this, they do not see the ender standing close by.

⁵They conquer me with the sea around me and go into the sea by their own force. How much of a conquest of the self is that? Release is the fruit of conquering the self. ⁶The Manus and their sons let me go, bearer of the Kuru line, and went out of the battle the way they had come. This same me the mindless mean to conquer. ⁷For my sake fathers and sons quarrel, and brothers too, among the worthless, over a kingdom, with their minds bound to what they call their own. ⁸This whole earth is mine, and not yours, fool: so they say, and set one against another they kill and are killed for my sake.