Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/338



Let the clouds fall in torrents, thunder roar,

And heaven's red bolt dash fiercely to the ground,

The dauntless damsel faithful love inspires

Treads boldly on, nor dreads the maddening storm.

Víta. Like an invading prince, who holds his court

Within the city of his humbled foe,

Yon mighty cloud, advancing with the wind,

With store of arrowy shower, with thundering drums,

And blazing streamers, marches to assail

In his own heavens the monarch of the night.

Vas. Nay, nay, not so; I rather read it thus;—

The clouds that, like unwieldy elephants,

Roll their inflated masses grumbling on,

Or whiten with the migratory troop

Of hovering cranes, teach anguish to the heart.

The storks' shrill cry sounds like the plaintive tabor

To her who muses on her lord's return.

Víta. Behold, where yonder ponderous cloud assumes

The stature of the elephant, the storks

Entwine a fillet for his front, and waves

The lightning like a chouri o'er his head.

Vas. Observe, my friend, the day is swallowed up

By these deep shades, dark as the dripping leaf

Of the taurála tree, and, like an elephant

That cowering shuns the battle's arrowy sleet,

So shrinks the scattering ant-hill from the shower. …

In sooth, I think the firmament dissolves:

Melted by Indra's scorching bolt, it falls

In unexhausted torrents. Now the cloud

Ascends—now stoops—now roars aloud in thunder—

Now sheds its streams—now frowns with deeper gloom,

Full of fantastic change, like one new-raised

By fortune's fickle favours.

Víta. Now the sky

With lightning flames, now laughs with whitening storks,

Now glows with Indra's painted bow that hurls

Its hundred shafts—now rattles with his bolt—

Now loud it chafes with rushing winds, and now,

With clustering clouds that roll their spiry folds

Like sable snakes along, it thickens dark

As if 'twere clothed with vapours such as spread

When incense soars in circling wreaths to heaven."

To exhaust such descriptive passages, even in such Indian plays as have been translated into European languages, would be a long and rather monotonous task. At the end of Act V. in this same play two similar descriptive passages are put into the mouth of Chárudatta, In Vikrama and Urvasí (or "The Hero and the Nymph"),