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.
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.
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