es to espy this wonder of divine art wrought in a
fragile human frame. The air was heavy with perfume; the silence
of the night was vocal with the chirping of crickets; the
reflections of the trees hung motionless in the lake; and with
his staff in his hand he stood, tall and straight and still, like
a forest tree. It seemed to me that I had, on opening my eyes,
died to all realities of life and undergone a dream birth into a
shadow land. Shame slipped to my feet like loosened clothes. I
heard his call--"Beloved, my most beloved!" And all my forgotten
lives united as one and responded to it. I said, "Take me, take
all I am!" And I stretched out my arms to him. The moon set
behind the trees. One curtain of darkness covered all. Heaven
and earth, time and space, pleasure and pain, death and life
merged together in an unbearable ecstasy. . . . With the first
gleam of light, the first twitter of birds, I rose up and sat
leaning on my left arm. He lay asleep with a vague smile about
his lips like the crescent moon in the morning. The rosy red
glow of the dawn fell upon his noble forehead. I sighed and
stood up. I drew together the leafy lianas to screen the
streaming sun from his face. I looked about me and saw the same
old earth. I remembered what I used to be, and ran and ran like
a deer afraid of her own shadow, through the forest path strewn
with shephali flowers. I found a lonely nook, and sitting down
covered my face with both hands, and tried to weep and cry. But
no tears came to my eyes.

Madana

Alas, thou daughter of mortals! I stole from the divine
Storehouse the fragrant wine of heaven, filled with it one
earthly night to the brim, and placed it in thy hand to drink--
yet still I hear this cry of anguish!

Chitra [bitterly]

Who drank it? The rarest completion of life's desire, the first
union of love was proffered to me, but was wrested from my grasp?
This borrowed beauty, this falsehood that enwraps me, will slip
from me taking with it the only monument of that sweet union, as
the petals fall from an overblown flower; and the woman ashamed
of her naked poverty will sit weeping day and night. Lord Love,
this cursed appearance companions me like a demon robbing