ll glow
When comes her final overthrow;
From gate to gate, from court to spire
Proud Lanka was one blaze of fire,
And every headland, rock and bay
Shone bright a hundred leagues away.
Forth, blinded by the heat and flame
Ran countless giants huge of frame;
And, mustering for fierce attack,
The Vanars charged to drive them back,
While shout and scream and roar and cry
Reechoed through the earth and sky.
There Rama stood with strength renewed,
And ever, as the foe he viewed,
Shaking the distant regions rang
His mighty bow's tremendous clang.
Then through the gates Nikumbha hied,
And Kumbha by his brother's side,
Sent forth--the bravest and the best--
To battle by the king's behest.
There fought the chiefs in open field,
And Angad fell and Dwivid reeled.
Sugriva saw: by rage impelled
He crushed the bow which Kumbha held.
About his foe Sugriva wound
His arms, and, heaving from the ground
The giant hurled him o'er the bank;
And deep beneath the sea he sank.
Like mandar hill with furious swell
Up leapt the waters where he fell.
Again he rose: he sprang to land
And raised on high his threatening hand:
Full on Sugriva's chest it came
And shook the Vanar's massy frame,
But on the wounded bone he broke
His wrist--so furious was the stroke.
With force that naught could stay or check,
Sugriva smote him neath the neck.
The fierce blow crashed through flesh and bone
And Kumbha lay in death o'erthrown.
Nikumbha saw his brother die,
And red with fury flashed his eye.
He dashed with mighty sway and swing
His axe against the Vanar king;
But shattered on that living rock
It split in fragments at the shock.
Sugriva, rising to the blow,
Raised his huge hand and smote his foe.
And in the dust the giant lay
Gasping in blood his soul away.

[I have briefly despatched Kumbha and Nikumbha, each of whom has in the
text a long Canto to himself. When they fall Ravan sends forth Makaraksha
or Crocodile-Eye, the son of Khara who was slain by Rama in the forest
before the abduction of Sita. The account of his sallying forth, of his
battle with Rama and of his death by the fiery dart of that hero occupies
two Cantos which I entirely pass over. Indrajit again comes forth and,
rendered invisible by his magic art slays countless Vanars with his
unerring arrows. He retires to the city and returns bearing in his chariot
an effigy of Sita, the work of magic, weeping and wailing by his side. He
grasps the lovely image by the hair and cu