And, saturate with cloud-born dew, the glittering verdant-mantled earth,
The cuckoos and the peacocks flew, disputing as in drunken mirth.--

"In such a time, so soft, so bland, oh beautiful! I chanced to go.
With quiver and with bow in hand, where clear Sarayu's waters flow,
If haply to the river's brink at night the buffalo might stray,
Or elephant, the stream to drink,--intent my savage game to slay.
Then of a water cruse, as slow it filled, the gurgling sound I heard,
Nought saw I, but the sullen low of elephant that sound appeared.
The swift well-feathered arrow I upon the bowstring fitting straight,
Towards the sound the shaft let fly, ah, cruelly deceived by fate!
The winged arrow scarce had flown, and scarce had reached its destined
aim,
'Ah me, I'm slain,' a feeble moan in trembling human accents came.
'Ah, whence hath come this fatal shaft against a poor recluse like me,
Who shot that bolt with deadly craft,--alas! what cruel man is he?
At the lone midnight had I come to draw the river's limpid flood,
And here am struck to death, by whom? ah whose this wrongful deed of
blood?
Alas! and in my parents' heart, the old, the blind, and hardly fed,
In the wild wood, hath pierced the dart, that here hath struck their
offspring dead.
Ah, deed most profitless as worst, a deed of wanton useless guilt:
As though a pupil's hand accurs'd his holy master's blood had spilt.
But not mine own untimely fate,--it is not that which I deplore.
My blind, my aged parents' state--'tis their distress afflicts me more.
That sightless pair, for many a day, from me their scanty food have
earned;
What lot is theirs when I'm away, to the five elements returned?
Alike, all wretched they, as I--ah, whose this triple deed of blood?