SELECTIONS FROM "SACONTALA,”.

AN INDIAN DRAMA.

FROM THE ORIGINAL SANSCRIT OF CALIDASA.

MY

O GOD OF LOVE.

Y heart can no more return to its former placid state than water can reascend the steep down which it has fallen. O god of Love, how can thy darts be so keen, since they are pointed with flowers? Yes, I discover the reason of their keenness: they are tipped with the flames which the wrath of Hara kindled, and which blaze at this moment like the Bárava fire under the waves. How else couldst thou, who wast consumed even to ashes, be still the inflamer of our souls? By thee and by the moon, though each of you seems worthy of confidence, we lovers are cruelly deceived. They who love as I do ascribe flowery shafts to thee and cool beams to the moon with equal impropriety, for the moon sheds fire on them with her dewy rays and thou pointest with sharp diamonds those arrows which seem to be barbed with blossoms. Yet this god, who bears a fish on his banners and who wounds me to the soul, will give me real delight if he destroy me with the aid of my beloved, whose eyes are large and beautiful as those of a roe. O powerful divinity, even when I thus adore thy attributes, hast thou no compassion? Thy fire, O Love, is fanned into a blaze by a hundred of my vain thoughts. Does it become thee to draw thy bow even on thy ear, that the shaft, aimed at my bosom, may inflict a deeper wound?

THE TIME OF THE NIGHT.

I am ordered by the venerable Canna, who is returned from the place of his pilgrimage, to observe the time of the night, and am, therefore, come forth to see how much remains of it. On one side the moon, who kindles the flowers of the Oshadhi, has nearly sunk in his western bed, and on the other the sun, seated behind his charioteer Arun, is beginning his course. The lustre of them both is conspicuous when they rise and when they set, and by their example should men be equally firm in prosperous and in adverse fortune. The moon has now disappeared, and the night-flower pleases no more; it leaves only a remembrance of its odor and languishes like a tender bride whose pain is intolerable in the absence of her beloved. The ruddy morn impurples the dewdrops on the branches of yonder Vadarí; the peacock, shaking off sleep, hastens from the cottages of hermits interwoven with holy grass; and yonder antelope, springing hastily from the place of sacrifice, which is marked with his hoofs, raises himself on high and stretches his graceful limbs. How is the moon fallen. from the sky with diminished beams!-the moon, who had set his foot on the head of Suméru, king of mountains, and had climbed, scattering the rear of darkness, even to the central palace of Vishnu. Thus do the great men of this world ascend with extreme labor to the summit of ambition, but easily and quickly descend from it.

Translation of SIR WILLIAM JONES.

Go stand where I have stood
And see the strong man bow
With gnashing teeth, lips bathed in blood
And cold and livid brow;

Go catch his wandering glance, and see
There mirrored his soul's misery.

Go hear what I have heard—
The sobs of sad despair

As memory's feeling fount hath stirred,
And its revealings there

Have told him what he might have been Had he the drunkard's fate foreseen.

Go to my mother's side

And her crushed spirit cheer; Thine own deep anguish hide,

Wipe from her cheek the tear;

Mark her dimmed eye, her furrowed brow, The that streaks her dark hair now, gray

Her toil-worn frame, her trembling limb,
And trace the ruin back to him

Whose plighted faith in early youth
Promised eternal love and truth,
But who, forsworn, hath yielded up
That promise to the deadly cup

And led her down from love and light,
From all that made her pathway bright,
And chained her there, 'mid want and strife,
That lowly thing a drunkard's wife,
And stamped on childhood's brow so mild.
That withering blight a drunkard's child.