e sacrifice.
Soaring toward the heavens,
Through the sky it fled?
But the Rudras chasing
Smote away its head.
Prostrate on the pavement
Daksha fell dismayed:--
"Mightiest, thou hast conquered
Thee we ask for aid.
Let not our oblations
All be rendered vain;
Let our toilsome labour
Full fruition gain."
Bright the broken altars
Shone with Shiva's form;
"Be it so!" His blessing
Soothed that frantic storm.
Soon his anger ceases,
Though it soon arise;--
But the Deer's Head ever
Blazes in the skies."

_Indian Ballads and other Poems._

Page 286. Urvasi.

"The personification of Urvasi herself is as thin as that of Eos or
Selene. Her name is often found in the Veda as a mere name for the
morning, and in the plural number it is used to denote the dawns which
passing over men bring them to old age and death. Urvasi is the bright
flush of light overspreading the heaven before the sun rises, and is but
another form of the many mythical beings of Greek mythology whose names
take us back to the same idea or the same root. As the dawn in the Vedic
hymns is called Uruki, the far-going (Telephassa, Telephos), so is she
also Uruasi, the wide-existing or wide-spreading; as are Europe,
Euryanassa, Euryphassa, and many more of the sisters of Athene and
Aphrodite. As such she is the mother of Vasishtha, the bright being, as
Oidipous is the son of Iokaste; and although Vasishtha, like Oidipous, has
become a mortal bard or sage, he is still the son of Mitra and Varuna, of
night and day. Her lover Pururavas is the counterpart of the Hellenic
Polydeukes; but the continuance of her union with him depends on the
condition that she never sees him unclothed. But the Gandharvas, impatient
of her long sojourn among mortal men resolved to bring her back to their
bright home; and Pururavas is thus led unwitingly to disregard her
warning. A ewe with two lambs was tied to her couch, and the Gandharvas
stole one of them; Urvasi said, 'They take away my darling, as if I lived
in a land where there is no hero and no man.' They stole the second, and
she upbraided her husband again. Then Pururavas looked and said, 'How can
that be a land without heroes or men where I am?' And naked he sprang up;
he thought it was too long to put on his dress. Then the Gandharvas sent a
flash of lighting, and Urvasi saw her husband naked as by daylight. Then
she vanished. 'I come back,' she said, and went. 'Then he bewailed his
vanishe