ng,
Giving the vine-bride to her mango-tree;
Before that happy day, dear, you are treading
The path with no return. It should not be.

And this ashoka-tree that you have tended
With eager longing for the blossoms red--
How can I twine the flowers that should have blended
With living curls, in garlands for the dead?

The tree remembers how the anklets, tinkling
On graceful feet, delighted other years;
Sad now he droops, your form with sorrow sprinkling,
And sheds his blossoms in a rain of tears.

Joy's sun is down, all love is fallen and perished,
The song of life is sung, the spring is dead,
Gone is the use of gems that once you cherished,
And empty, ever empty, is my bed.

You were my comrade gay, my home, my treasure,
You were my bosom's friend, in all things true,
My best-loved pupil in the arts of pleasure:
Stern death took all I had in taking you.

Still am I king, and rich in kingly fashion,
Yet lacking you, am poor the long years through;
I cannot now be won to any passion,
For all my passions centred, dear, in you.

Aja commits the body of his beloved queen to the flames. A holy hermit
comes to tell the king that his wife had been a nymph of heaven in a
former existence, and that she has now returned to her home. But Aja
cannot be comforted. He lives eight weary years for the sake of his
young son, then is reunited with his queen in Paradise.

_Ninth canto. The hunt_.--This canto introduces us to King Dasharatha,
father of the heroic Rama. It begins with an elaborate description of
his glory, justice, prowess, and piety; then tells of the three
princesses who became his wives: Kausalya, Kaikeyi, and Sumitra. In
the beautiful springtime he takes an extended hunting-trip in the
forest, during which an accident happens, big with fate.

He left his soldiers far behind one day
In the wood, and following where deer-tracks lay,
Came with his weary horse adrip with foam
To river-banks where hermits made their home.

And in the stream he heard the water fill
A jar; he heard it ripple clear and shrill,
And shot an arrow, thinking he had found
A trumpeting elephant, toward the gurgling sound.

Such actions are forbidden to a king,
Yet Dasharatha sinned and did this thing;
For even the wise and learned man is minded
To go astray, by selfish passion blinded.

He heard the startling cry, "My father!" rise