eamed as madly as a frightened bird.

Trees shed their flowers, the peacock-dances ended,
The grasses dropped from mouths of feeding deer,
As if the universal forest blended
Its tears with hers, and shared her woeful fear.

While she laments thus piteously, she is discovered by the poet-sage
Valmiki, who consoles her with tender and beautiful words, and
conducts her to his hermitage, where she awaits the time of her
confinement. Meanwhile Rama leads a dreary life, finding duty but a
cold comforter. He makes a golden statue of his wife, and will not
look at other women.

_Fifteenth canto. Rama goes to heaven_.--The canto opens with a rather
long description of a fight between Rama's youngest brother and a
giant. On the journey to meet the giant, Shatrughna spends a night in
Valmiki's hermitage, and that very night Sita gives birth to twin
sons. Valmiki gives them the names Kusha and Lava, and when they grow
out of childhood he teaches them his own composition, the _Ramayana_,
"the sweet story of Rama," "the first path shown to poets." At this
time the young son of a Brahman dies in the capital, and the father
laments at the king's gate, for he believes that the king is unworthy,
else heaven would not send death prematurely. Rama is roused to stamp
out evil-doing in the kingdom, whereupon the dead boy comes to life.
The king then feels that his task on earth is nearly done, and
prepares to celebrate the great horse-sacrifice.[4]

At this sacrifice appear the two youths Kusha and Lava, who sing the
epic of Rama's deeds in the presence of Rama himself. The father
perceives their likeness to himself, then learns that they are indeed
his children, whom he has never seen. Thereupon Sita is brought
forward by the poet-sage Valmiki and in the presence of her husband
and her detractors establishes her constant purity in a terrible
fashion.

"If I am faithful to my lord
In thought, in action, and in word,
I pray that Earth who bears us all
May bid me in her bosom fall."

The faithful wife no sooner spoke
Than earth divided, and there broke
From deep within a flashing light
That flamed like lightning, blinding-bright.

And, seated on a splendid throne
Upheld by serpents' hoods alone,
The goddess Earth rose visibly,
And she was girded with the sea.

Sita was clasped in her embrace,
While still she gazed on Rama's face:
He cried aloud in wild despair;
She sank, and left h