Page:Karl Gjellerup - The Pilgrim Kamanita - 1911.djvu/31

 of day, where the sandy soil under a mango-tree ministered cooling to my love-tortured body, my only companion the seven-stringed vina, to which I confided my longing. As soon, however, as the lessening heat permitted my going out, I persuaded Somadatta to drive with me to the public gardens although he would have greatly preferred to be present at a quail fight. In vain, however, did I wander through the whole park. Many maidens were there, everywhere engaged in games as though bent on luring me with false hopes from one spot to another, but that peerless one—Lakshmi's very image—was not among them.

Bitterly disappointed I now made as though I were possessed by an irresistible longing again to enjoy the strangely fascinating life of the Gunga. We visited all the ghâts, and finally got into a boat in order to make one of the light-hearted flotilla which, evening by evening, rocked to and fro on the waves of the sacred stream, and I lingered till the play of light and the golden glow of evening were extinguished and the blaze of torches and the glimmer of lanterns danced and whirled on its glassy surface.

Then at last I was obliged to give up my silent but none the less passionate hope and bid my boatman steer for the nearest ghât.

After a sleepless night, I remained in my room, and in order to occupy and relieve my mind, which was utterly possessed by her image, till I should again be able to hasten to the public gardens, I sought with the aid of brush and colour to transfer to the tablet on my wall, her fair lineaments as I last beheld them, when, dancing, she struck the golden ball. I was unable to eat a morsel; for even as the Çakora with its exquisitely tender song lives only upon the rays of the moon, so did I live solely upon the rays that emanated from her whose face was as the moon in its