His queen, Kausalya, the divine, addressed he, as she rested near:
"Kausalya, if thou wakest, incline to thy lord's speech thy ready ear.
Whatever deed, or good or ill, by man, O blessed queen, is wrought.
Its proper fruit he gathers still, by time to slow perfection brought.
He who the opposing counsel's weight compares not in his judgment cool,
Or misery or bliss his fate, among the sage is deemed a fool.
As one that quits the Amra bower, the bright Palasa's pride to gain
Mocked by the promise of its flower, seeks its unripening fruit in vain,
So I the lovely Amra left for the Palasa's barren bloom,
Through mine own fatal error 'reft of banished Rama, mourn in gloom.
Kausalya! in my early youth by my keen arrow, at his mark
Aimed with too sure and deadly truth, was wrought a deed most fell and
dark.
At length, the evil that I did, hath fallen upon my fated head,
As when on subtle poison hid an unsuspecting child hath fed;
Even as that child unwittingly hath made the poisonous fare his food,
Even so, in ignorance by me was wrought that deed of guilt and blood.
Unwed wert thou in virgin bloom, and I in youth's delicious prime,
The season of the rains had come,--that soft and love enkindling time.
Earth's moisture all absorbed, the sun through all the world its warmth
had spread,
Turned from the north, its course begun, where haunt the spirits of the
dead:
Gathering o'er all the horizon's bound on high the welcome clouds
appeared,
Exulting, all the birds flew round,--cranes, cuckoos, peacocks, flew and
veered.
And all down each wide-watered shore the troubled, yet still limpid
floods,
Over their banks began to pour, as o'er them hung the bursting clouds.