The Project Gutenberg EBook of Bubbles of the Foam, by Unknown

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Title: Bubbles of the Foam

Author: Unknown

Translator: F. W. Bain

Release Date: November 20, 2006 [EBook #19874]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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BUBBLES OF THE FOAM

So Life's sad Sunset prizes
What Life's gay Dawn despises,
And always Winter wise is
When Summer is no more:
While Love than lightning fleeter
Turns all he touches sweeter,
To leave it incompleter
Behind him, than before.

AMARA

Years, looking forward, all too slow,
Yet looking back, too fast,
What is your joy, what is your woe,
But scented ash that used to glow,
A sandalwood of long ago,
A camphor of the past?

SULOCHANA

[Illustration]

BUBBLES OF THE FOAM

([Sanskrit])

TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT

BY

F. W. BAIN

_What! Mortal taste Immortal? Earth, kiss Heaven?
Confusion elemental!, ah! beware!_

SOMADEWA

WITH A FRONTISPIECE

METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON

_First Published in 1912_

DEDICATED

TO

LADY GLENCONNER

CONTENTS

PAGE
I. A SPOILED CHILD 1

II. THE THIRST OF AN ANTELOPE 27

I. A DAPPLED DAWN 29

II. A GLAMOUR OF NOON 63

III. THE DESERT AND THE NIGHT 89

INTRODUCTION

Four things are never far from you, in old Hindoo literature: underfoot,
all round you, or away on the horizon, there they always are: the
Forest, the Desert, the River, and the Hills.

It is never very easy, to understand the Past that really is a past: and
the age of Forests, like that of chivalry, is gone. But in the case of
ancient India, the chief obstacle to understanding arises from our bad
habit of always looking at the map with the North side up. Why this
inv