Toward the river brink it went--and there thy son expiring lay.
The fatal shaft when forth I drew--to heaven his parting spirit soared,
Dying he only thought of you--long, long, your lonely lot deplored.
Thus ignorantly did I slay--your child beloved, Oh hermit sage!
Turn thou on me, whose fated day--is come, thy all-consuming rage.'
He heard my dreadful tale at length--he stood all lifeless, motionless;
Then deep he groaned, and gathering strength--me his meek suppliant did
address.
'Kshatriya, 'tis well that thou hast turned--thy deed of murder to rehearse,
Else over all thy land had burned--the fire of my wide-wasting curse.
If with premeditated crime--the unoffending blood thou'dst spilt,
The Thunderer on his throne sublime--had shaken at such tremendous guilt.
Against the anchorite's sacred head--hadst, knowing, aimed thy shaft
accursed,
In th' holy Vedas deeply read--thy skull in seven wide rents had burst.
But since, unwitting, thou hast wrought--that deed of death, thou livest
still,
Oh son of Raghu, from thy thought--dismiss all dread of instant ill.
Oh lead me to that doleful spot--where my poor boy expiring lay,
Beneath the shaft thy fell hand shot--of my blind age, the staff, the stay.
On the cold earth 'twere yet a joy--to touch my perished child again,
(So long if I may live) my boy--in one last fond embrace to strain.
His body all bedewed with gore--his locks in loose disorder thrown,
Let me, let her but touch once more--to the dread realm of Yama gone.'
Then to that fatal place I brought--alone that miserable pair;
His sightless hands, and hers I taught--to touch their boy that slumbered
there.
Nor sooner did they feel him lie--on the moist herbage coldly thrown,
Both with a shrill and feeble cry--upon the body cast them down.
The mother as she lay and groaned--addressed her boy with quivering tongue,
And like a heifer sadly moaned--just plundered of her new-dropped young:
'Was not thy mother once, my son--than life itself more dear to thee?
Why the long way hast thou begun--without one gentle word to me.
One last embrace, and then, beloved--upon thy lonely journey go!
Alas! with anger art thou moved--that not a word thou wilt bestow?'
The miserable father now[151]--with gentle touch each cold limb pressed,
And to the dead his words of woe--as