5
But Parvati, with her dreadful sickle,
Shore the leaf, the precious bud that shrouded
And a flash of fate unkindly blasted
All the proud spun dream of bliss and name.
In the shady leafage of a plane tree
Once the queen was lulling him to slumber,
Tenderly removing from the soft fur
Aught that sucked audacious those blue veins;
Sudden from the bamboo thicket issued,
In a sailor’s garb, a human monster,
Softened not that heart of flint the touching
Sight of all that mother’s love and pains.
O’er the woods a musket shot; a piteous
Cry; the smoke cleared off and down the princess
Toppled headlong from her leafy fastness
Overtaken by the fatal lead;
From the mother’s dying arms the murderer
Tore the child and to his vessel bore him:
So to distant lands in galling fetters
Apedom’s last surviving promise sped.
III.
Ah! what anguish smote within thee, luckless
Hanuman, as far away
Thine ancestral wood and forest fastness
Muffled in the mist-wreath lay,
And beyond the stern thine eye went ranging
Tearful, under foreign skies and changing
Stars that bent o’er endless seas of grey.
