eet and down the terraced hill,
And through the plain in little silver streams,
Spreading the richest verdure far and wide.[2]
Here was the seat of King Suddhodana,
His royal park, walled by eternal hills,
Where trees and shrubs and flowers all native grew;
For in its bounds all the four seasons met,
From ever-laughing, ever-blooming spring
To savage winter with eternal snows.
Here stately palms, the banyan's many trunks,
Darkening whole acres with its grateful shade,
And bamboo groves, with graceful waving plumes,
The champak, with its fragrant golden flowers,
Asokas, one bright blaze of brilliant bloom,
The mohra, yielding food and oil and wine,
The sacred sandal and the spreading oak,
The mountain-loving fir and spruce and pine,
And giant cedars, grandest of them all,
Planted in ages past, and thinned and pruned
With that high art that hides all trace of art,[3]
Were placed to please the eye and show their form
In groves, in clumps, in jungles and alone.

Here all a forest seemed; there open groves,
With vine-clad trees, vines hanging from each limb,
A pendant chain of bloom, with shaded drives
And walks, with rustic seats, cool grots and dells,
With fountains playing and with babbling brooks,
And stately swans sailing on little lakes,
While peacocks, rainbow-tinted shrikes, pheasants,
Glittering like precious stones, parrots, and birds
Of all rich plumage, fly from tree to tree,
The whole scene vocal with sweet varied song;
And here a widespread lawn bedecked with flowers,
With clumps of brilliant roses grown to trees,
And fields with dahlias spread,[4] not stiff and prim
Like the starched ruffle of an ancient dame,
But growing in luxuriance rich and wild,
The colors of the evening and the rainbow joined,
White, scarlet, yellow, crimson, deep maroon,
Blending all colors in one dazzling blaze;
There orchards bend beneath their luscious loads;
Here vineyards climb the hills thick set with grapes;
There rolling pastures spread, where royal mares,
High bred, and colts too young for bit or spur,
Now quiet feed, then, as at trumpet's call,
With lion bounds, tails floating, neck outstretched,[5]
Nostrils distended, fleet as the flying wind
They skim the plain, and sweep in circles wide--
Nature's Olympic, copied, ne'er excelled.
Here, deer with dappled fawn bound o'er the grass,[6]
And sacred herds, and sheep w