Page:Sacred Books of the Buddhists Vol 1.djvu/116

 36, 37. 'The melodious music of the songs of birds longing for the pleasure of love, the dances of the peacocks whom Lasciviousness has taught that art, the sweet and praised buzzing of the honey-seeking bees: they make together a forest-concert that will rejoice your mind.

38, 39. 'Further, the rocks overspread at night with the silk garment of moonlight; the soft-stroking forest wind impregnated with the scent of flowering trees; the murmuring noise of the rivulets, pushing their waters over moving gravel so as to imitate the sound of a number of rattling female ornaments—all this will gladden your mind in the forest.'

This entreaty of his well-beloved wife filled him with a great desire to set out for the forest. Therefore he prepared to bestow great largesses on the mendicant people.

But in the king's palace the news of the banishment pronounced upon Visvantara caused great alarm and violent lamentations. Likewise the mendicants, agitated by sorrow and grief, became almost beside themselves, or behaved as if they were intoxicated or mad, and uttered many and various lamentations of this kind:

40. 'How is it that Earth does not feel ashamed, permitting the hatchets to hew down that shady tree, her foster-child, the giver of such sweet fruits? It is now plain she has been deprived of consciousness.'

41. 'If no one will prevent those who are about to destroy that well of cold, pure, and sweet water, then in truth the guardians of the world-quarters are falsely named so, or they are absent, or they are nothing but a mere sound.'

42. 'Oh! Indeed Injustice is awake and Righteousness either asleep or dead, since prince Visvantara is banished from his reign.'

43. 'Who possesses such a refined skill in occasioning distress, as to have the cruelty to aim at starving us, the guiltless, who obtain a scanty livelihood by begging?'