C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Grishma; or The Season of Heat
By Sir Edwin Arnold (1832–1904)
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Full conduits streaming, where fair bathers lie,
With sunsets splendid, when the strong day, ended,
Melts into peace, like a tired lover’s sigh—
So cometh summer nigh.
From starry clusters; courts of calm retreat,
Where wan rills warble over glistening marble;
Cold jewels, and the sandal, moist and sweet—
These for the time are meet
Love songs for singing which all hearts enthrall,
Wine cups that sparkle at the lips of lovers,
Odors and pleasures in the palace hall:
In “Suchi” these befall.
Fragrant with blossoms, and with pearl strings gay,
Their new-laved hair unbound, and spreading round
Faint scents, the palace maids in tender play
The ardent heats allay
With lac-dye rosy and neat, and anklets ringing,
In music trip along, echoing the song
Of wild swans, all men’s hearts by subtle singing
To Kama’s service bringing;
Their white pearls—weaving with the saffron stars
Girdles and diadems—their gold and gems
Linked upon waist and thigh, in Love’s soft snares
Is not caught unawares?
For the warm midnight—and their beauty cover
With woven veil too airy to conceal
Its dew-pearled softness; so, with youth clad over,
Each seeks her eager lover.
Faint balm that nests between those gem-bound breasts,
Voices of stream and bird, and clear notes heard
From vina strings amid the songs’ unrests,
Wake passion. With light jests,
Each maid enhances newly sprung delight;
Quick leaps the fire of Love’s divine desire,
So kindled in the season when the Night
With broadest moons is bright;
With Love’s draughts drunken, those close lovers lie;
And—all for sorrow there shall come To-morrow—
The Moon, who watched them, pales in the gray sky,
While the still Night doth die.
T
O’er earth and heaven, until the sun-scorched plain
Its road scarce shows for dazzling heat to those
Who, far from home and love, journey in pain,
Longing to rest again.
For cool streams yearning, herds of antelope
Haste where the brassy sky, banked black and high,
Hath clouded promise. “There will be”—they hope—
“Water beyond the tope!”
His slow coils trailing o’er the fiery dust,
The cobra glides to nighest shade, and hides
His head beneath the peacock’s train: he must
His ancient foeman trust!
By the red morning, droop with weary cries;
No stroke they make to slay that gliding snake
Who creeps for shelter underneath the eyes
Of their spread jewelries!
For fierce thirst howling, orbs a-stare and red,
Sees without heed the elephants pass by him,
Lolls his lank tongue, and hangs his bloody head,
His mighty forces fled.
Green leaves, and sucking with a dry trunk dew;
Tormented by the blazing day, they wander,
And, nowhere finding water, still renew
Their search—a woful crew!
Where reeds and grasses on the soft slime grow,
The wild-boars, grunting ill-content and anger,
Dig lairs to shield them from the torturing glow,
Deep, deep as they can go.
’Neath that flame-darting ball—and waters drained
Down to their mud, crawls croaking forth, to cower
Under the black-snake’s coils, where there is gained
A little shade; and, strained
Gleaming so cruel on his venomous head,
That worm, whose tongue, as the blast burns along,
Licks it for coolness—all discomfited—
Strikes not his strange friend dead!
Once brightly blowing, hath no blossoms more!
Its fish are dead, its fearful cranes are fled,
And crowding elephants its flowery shore
Tramp to a miry floor.
From dried drawn lips, horns laid aback, and eyes
Mad with the drouth, and thirst-tormented mouth,
Down-thundering from his mountain cavern flies
The bison in wild wise,
The trees droop, where the crows sit in a row
With beaks agape. The hot baboon and ape
Climb chattering to the bush. The buffalo
Bellows. And locusts go
Wanders th’ affrighted eye, beholding blasted
The pleasant grass: the forest’s leafy mass
Wilted; its waters waned; its grace exhausted;
Its creatures wasted.
As blooms sprung new on the Kusumbha-Tree—
The wild-fire’s tongue, fanned by the wind, and flung
Furiously forth; the palms, canes, brakes, you see
Wrapped in one agony
In fiery levin, roars from jungle caves;
Hisses and blusters through the bamboo clusters,
Crackles across the curling grass, and drives
Into the river waves
Coil from the cotton-tree—a snake of gold—
Violently break from root and trunk, to take
The bending boughs and leaves in deadly hold
Then passing—to enfold
For anguish of such fate their enmity
Laying aside, burst for the river wide
Which flows between fair isles: in company
As friends they madly flee!
B
With songs of secret waters cooling the quiet air,
Under blue buds of lotus beds, and pâtalas which shed
Fragrance and balm, while Moonlight weaves over thy happy head
Its silvery veil! So Nights and Days of Summer pass for thee
Amid the pleasure-palaces, with love and melody!