do, whatever you say, and
wherever you turn your eyes, the day is not long enough
for her efforts to imitate you."

No. 440: "...She, whose every limb was bathed in
perspiration, at the mere mention of his name."

No. 453: "My friend! tell me honestly, I ask you: do
the bracelets of all women become larger when the lover
is far away?"

No. 531: "In whichever direction I look I see you
before me, as if painted there. The whole firmament
brings before me as it were a series of pictures of
you."

No. 650: "From him proceed all discourses, all are
about him, end with him. Is there then, my aunt, but
one young man in all this village?"

While these poems may have been sung mostly by bayaderes, there are
others which obviously give expression to the legitimate feelings of
married women. This is especially true of the large number which voice
the sorrows of women at the absence of their husbands after the rains
have set in. The rainy season is in India looked on as the season of
love, and separation from the lover at this time is particularly
bewailed, all the more as the rains soon make the roads impassable.

No. 29: "To-day, when, alone, I recalled the joys we
had formerly shared, the thunder of the new clouds
sounded to me like the death-drum (that accompanies
culprits to the place of execution)."

No. 47: "The young wife of the man who has got ready
for his journey roams, after his departure, from house
to house, trying to get the secret for preserving life
from wives who have learned how to endure separation
from their beloved."

No. 227: "In putting down the lamp the wife of the
wanderer turns her face aside, fearing that the stream
of tears that falls at the thought of the beloved might
drop on it."

No. 501: "When the voyager, on taking leave, saw his
wife turn pale, he was overcome by grief and unable to
go."

No. 623: "The wanderer's wife does indeed protect her
little son by interposing her head to catch the rain
water dripping from the eaves, but fails to notice (in
her grief over her absent one) that he is wetted by her
tears."

These twenty-one poems are the best samples of everything contained in
Hala's anthology illustrating the serious side of love among the
bayaderes and married women of India. Careful perusal of them