ace. Nature's sympathy with human joys and griefs
was taken for granted, and she played a part of her own in drama.

In the _Mahabharata_, when Damajanti is wandering in search of her
lost Nala and sees the great mountain top, she asks it for her
prince.

Oh mountain lord!
Far seen and celebrated hill, that cleav'st
The blue o' the sky, refuge of living things,
Most noble eminence, I worship thee!...
O Mount, whose double ridge stamps on the sky
Yon line, by five-score splendid pinnacles
Indented; tell me, in this gloomy wood
Hast thou seen Nala? Nala, wise and bold!
Ah mountain! why consolest thou me not,
Answering one word to sorrowful, distressed,
Lonely, lost Damajanti?

And when she comes to the tree Asoka, she implores:

Ah, lovely tree! that wavest here
Thy crown of countless shining clustering blooms
As thou wert woodland king! Asoka tree!
Tree called the sorrow-ender, heart's-ease tree!
Be what thy name saith; end my sorrow now,
Saying, ah, bright Asoka, thou hast seen
My Prince, my dauntless Nala--seen that lord
Whom Damajanti loves and his foes fear.

In Maghas' epic, _The Death of Sisupala_, plants and animals lead the
same voluptuous life as the 'deep-bosomed, wide-hipped' girls with
the ardent men.

'The mountain Raivataka touches the ether with a thousand heads,
earth with a thousand feet, the sun and moon are his eyes. When the
birds are tired and tremble with delight from the caresses of their
mates, he grants them shade from lotos leaves. Who in the world is
not astonished when he has climbed, to see the prince of mountains
who overshadows the ether and far-reaching regions of earth, standing
there with his great projecting crags, while the moon's sickle
trembles on his summit?'

In Kalidasa's _Urwasi_, the deserted King who is searching for his
wife asks the peacock:

Oh tell,
If, free on the wing as you soar,
You have seen the loved nymph I deplore--
You will know her, the fairest of damsels fair,
By her large soft eye and her graceful air;
Bird of the dark blue throat and eye of jet,
Oh tell me, have you seen the lovely face
Of my fair bride--lost in this dreary wilderness?

and the mountain:

Say mountain, whose expansive slope confines
The forest verge, oh, tell me hast thou seen
A nymph as beauteous as the bride of love
Mounting with slender frame thy steep ascent,
Or wearied, resting in thy crowning woods