cred hold, the moment that
Refusal comes, the jav'lin from my hand
Will fly at Timma and will strike him dead."
Meantime brave Chandra in the audience hall
Of her own palace, 'midst her faithful men,
Received the news, and then in angry tones
She spurned the wild request, when there appeared
Her priest, who counsel gave in words like these:
"It is not meet, O royal lady, that
Thou shouldst this attitude defiant assume,
When Bukka in a moment may bereave
Us all of our dear, noble Timmaraj,
And drive thee, too, to fling thy life away;
And, if 'tis writ thou shouldst so die with him,
Our sad entreaties and our tears will nought
Avail, nor alter laws thus preordained.
But haply, if it is writ otherwise,
Why break the link that binds you both for life?
Call it not chance the link that binds men's hearts,
But Heaven's sacred gift to sweeten life.
It is the hand divine that guides man's life
From the inception to the very end;
Nay more, sees even after that life's end,
Its own appointed destiny is reached,
To take fresh shape, its course to run anew,
And reap what it had sown before, for take
The tree, its fruit but falls to reach its base.
The calf his mother easily doth find
Amidst a thousand cows, to suck the milk;
And all our deeds doth likewise follow us,
E'en after death, and they are not our own,
But preordained laws, that must perforce
Be anywise fulfilled, and He alone
It is that sees their strict fulfilment here.
For ah! why should the noblest maiden and
The fairest and the wisest in the land
Be mated to the meanest wretch through life?
All that is deemed the highest in the world--
Beauty and honour, valour, virtue, wealth--
All these availeth not, her mind is blank;
She herself knows not whom to love and wed;
Not e'en dear friendship kindles in her breast
The lamp of love, but suddenly
A passing stranger's glance, a simple look
Instinctive plants that love, which slow takes shape,
Despite a thousand counter forces, till
At last the final end is reached: a look
Is thus enough to bind two hearts for life,
And this is but the true fulfilment of
A preordained law that in the life
Before had all but reached perfection full,
Or their appointed shape had all but tak'n,
And in the new life easily attains
The end: such, then, the truth of all such things.
Call it what you will, simple tendency
Inher