THE CENTURY OF LIFE
MAGNANIMITY
My brother, exalt thyself though in o’erthrow! Five noble planets through these spaces roll, Jupiter is of them ;—not on these he leaps, Rahu,* the immortal demon of eclipse, In his high magnanimity of soul.
Smit with God’s thunders only his head he keeps, Yet seizes in his brief and gloomy hour Of vengeance the great luminous kings of heaven, Day’s Lord and the light to whom night’s soul is given; He scorns to strive with things of lesser power.
THE MOTION OF GIANTS
On his wide hood as on a painted shield Bears up the rangéd worlds, Infinite, the Snake;
Him in the giant midmost of his back The eternal Tortoise brooks, whom the great field Of vague and travelling waters ceaselessly Encompass with the proud unfathomed sea. O easy mights and marvellous of the great, Whose simplest action is yet vast with fate!
- Rahu,the Titan, stole or seized part of the nectar which rose from the world-ocean at the
churning by the Gods and Titans and was appropriated by the Gods. For this violence he was smitten in two by the discus of Vishnu; but as he had drunk the nectar, he remains immortal and seeks always to revenge himself by swallowing the Sun and Moon who had detected his theft. The Tortoise mentioned in the next epigram upheld the mountain Mandar, which was the stick of the churning. The Great Snake, Ananta, wag the rope of the churning, he on
whose hood the earth now rests.
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