Page:The Indian Song of Songs - tr. Arnold - 1875.djvu/9



flowers please, whatever their name and country; and so far as any brightness or fragrance may have been preserved from the Aryan original in this paraphrase, it will no doubt be recognised by the reader of intelligence. Yet being so exotic, the poem demands a word or two of introduction.

The "Gîta Govinda," then, or "Song of Govind," is a Sanskrit idyll, or little pastoral drama, in which—under the form of, an incarnation of the god Vishnoo—the human soul is displayed in its relations alternately with earthly and celestial beauty. Krishna—at once human and divine—is first seen attracted by the pleasures of the senses (personified by the shepherdesses in the wood), and wasting his affections upon the delights of their illusory world. , the spirit of intellectual and moral beauty, comes to free him