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_ANCIENT BALLADS
AND LEGENDS
OF HINDUSTAN_
BY
TORU DUTT
AUTHOR OF "A SHEAF GLEANED IN FRENCH FIELDS," AND
"LE JOURNAL DE MADEMOISELLE D'ARVERS."
WITH AN INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR
BY EDMUND GOSSE.
[Illustration]
LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO.
MDCCCLXXXV
"I never heard the old song of Percie and Douglas, that I found not
my heart moved, more than with a trumpet: and yet it is sung but by
some blinde crowder, with no rougher voice, than rude style."
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.
Transcriber's Note:
Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Archaic
spellings have been retained. Punctuation has been normalised. The
oe ligature has been transcribed as [oe].
CONTENTS.
Page
I. Savitri 1
II. Lakshman 46
III. Jogadhya Uma 54
IV. The Royal Ascetic and the Hind 65
V. Dhruva 71
VI. Buttoo 77
VII. Sindhu 89
VIII. Prehlad 107
IX. Sita 122
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.
Near Hastings 127
France--1870 129
The Tree of Life 131
On the Fly Leaf of Erckmann-Chatrian's
novel entitled _Madame Therese_ 133
Sonnet--Baugmaree 135
Sonnet--The Lotus 136
Our Casuarina Tree 137
TORU DUTT.
INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR.
If Toru Dutt were alive, she would still be younger than any recognized
European writer, and yet her fame, which is already considerable, has
been entirely posthumous. Within the brief space of four years which now
divides us from the date of her decease, her genius has been revealed to
the world under many phases, and has been recognized throughout France
and England. Her name, at least, is no longer unfamiliar in the ear of
any well-read man or woman. But at the hour of her death she had
published but one book, and that book had found but two reviewers in
Europe. One of these, M. Andre Theuriet, the well-known poet and
novelist, gave the "Sheaf gleaned in French Fields" adequate praise in
the "Revue des Deux Mondes;" but the other, the writer of the present
notice, has a melancholy satisfaction in having been a little earlier
still in sounding the only note of welcome which reached the dying
poetess from England. It was while Professor W. Minto was editor of the
"Examiner," that one day in August, 1876, in the very heart of the dead
season for books, I happened to be in the office of that newspaper, and
was upbraiding the whole body of publishers for issuing no books worth
reviewing. At that moment the postman brought in a thin and sallow
packet with a wonderful Indian postmark on it, and containing a most
unattractive orange pamphlet of verse, printed at Bhowanipore, and
entitled "A Sheaf gleaned in French Fields, by Toru Dutt." This shabby
little book of some two hundred pages, without preface or introduction,
seemed specially destined by its particular providence to find its way
hastily into the waste-paper basket. I remember that Mr. Minto thrust it
into my unwilling hands, and said "There! see whether you can't make
something of that." A hopeless volume it seemed, with its queer type,
published at Bhowanipore, printed at the Saptahiksambad Press! But when
at last I took it out of my pocket, what was my surprise and almost
rapture to open at such verse as this:--
Still barred thy doors! The far east glows,
The morning wind blows fresh and free
Should not the hour that wakes the rose
Awaken also thee?
All look for thee, Love, Light, and Song,
Light in the sky deep red above,
Song, in the lark of pinions strong,
And in my heart, true Love.
Apart we miss our nature's goal,
Why strive to cheat our destinies?
Was not my love made for thy soul?
Thy beauty for mine eyes?
No longer sleep,
Oh, listen now!
I wait and weep,
But where art thou?
When poetry is as good as this it does not much matter whether Rouveyre
prints it upon Whatman paper, or whether it steals to light in blurred
type from some press in Bhowanipore.
Toru Dutt was the youngest of the three children of a high-caste Hindu
couple in Bengal. Her father, who survives them all, the Baboo Govin
Chunder Dutt, is himself distinguished among his countrymen for the
width of his views and the vigour of his intelligence. His only son,
Abju, died in 1865, at the age of fourteen, and left his two younger
sisters to console their parents. Aru, the elder daughter, born in 1854,
was eighteen months senior to Toru, the subject of this memoir, who was
born in Calcutta on the 4th of March, 1856. With the exception of one
year's visit to Bombay, the childhood of these girls was spent in
Calcutta, at their father's garden-house. In a poem now printed for the
first time, Toru refers to the scene of her earliest memories, the
circling wilderness of foliage, the shining tank with the round leaves
of the lilies, the murmuring dusk under the vast branches of the central
casuarina-tree. Here, in a mystical retirement more irksome to an
European in fancy than to an Oriental in reality, the brain of this
wonderful child was moulded. She was pure Hindu, full of the typical
qualities of her race and blood, and, as the present volume shows us for
the first time, preserving to the last her appreciation of the poetic
side of her ancient religion, though faith itself in Vishnu and Siva had
been cast aside with childish things and been replaced by a purer
faith. Her mother fed her imagination with the old songs and legends of
their people, stories which it was the last labour of her life to weave
into English verse; but it would seem that the marvellous faculties of
Toru's mind still slumbered, when, in her thirteenth year, her father
decided to take his daughters to Europe to learn English and French. To
the end of her days Toru was a better French than English scholar. She
loved France best, she knew its literature best, she wrote its language
with more perfect elegance. The Dutts arrived in Europe at the close of
1869, and the girls went to school, for the first and last time, at a
French pension. They did not remain there very many months; their father
took them to Italy and England with him, and finally they attended for a
short time, but with great zeal and application, the lectures for women
at Cambridge. In November, 1873, they went back again to Bengal, and
the four remaining years of Toru's life were spent in the old
garden-house at Calcutta, in a feverish dream of intellectual effort and
imaginative production. When we consider what she achieved in these
forty-five months of seclusion, it is impossible to wonder that the
frail and hectic body succumbed under so excessive a strain.
She brought with her from Europe a store of knowledge that would have
sufficed to make an English or French girl seem learned, but which in
her case was simply miraculous. Immediately on her return she began to
study Sanskrit with the same intense application which she gave to all
her work, and mastering the language with extraordinary swiftness, she
plunged into its mysterious literature. But she was born to write, and
despairing of an audience in her own language, she began to adopt ours
as a medium for her thought. Her first essay, published when she was
eighteen, was a monograph, in the "Bengal Magazine," on Leconte de
Lisle, a writer with whom she had a sympathy which is very easy to
comprehend. The austere poet of "La Mort de Valmiki" was, obviously, a
figure to whom the poet of "Sindhu" must needs be attracted on
approaching European literature. This study, which was illustrated by
translations into English verse, was followed by another on Josephin
Soulary, in whom she saw more than her maturer judgment might have
justified. There is something very interesting and now, alas! still more
pathetic in these sturdy and workmanlike essays in unaided criticism.
Still more solitary her work became, in July, 1874, when her only
sister, Aru, died, at the age of twenty. She seems to have been no less
amiable than her sister, and if gifted with less originality and a less
forcible ambition, to have been finely accomplished. Both sisters were
well-trained musicians, with full contralto voices, and Aru had a
faculty for design which promised well. The romance of "Mlle. D'Arvers"
was originally projected for Aru to illustrate, but no page of this book
did Aru ever see.
In 1876, as we have said, appeared that obscure first volume at
Bhowanipore. The "Sheaf gleaned in French Fields" is certainly the most
imperfect of Toru's writings, but it is not the least interesting. It is
a wonderful mixture of strength and weakness, of genius overriding great
obstacles and of talent succumbing to ignorance and inexperience. That
it should have been performed at all is so extraordinary that we forget
to be surprised at its inequality. The English verse is sometimes
exquisite; at other times the rules of our prosody are absolutely
ignored, and it is obvious that the Hindu poetess was chanting to
herself a music that is discord in an English ear. The notes are no
less curious, and to a stranger no less bewildering. Nothing could be
more naive than the writer's ignorance at some points, or more startling
than her learning at others. On the whole, the attainment of the book
was simply astounding. It consisted of a selection of translations from
nearly one hundred French poets, chosen by the poetess herself on a
principle of her own which gradually dawned upon the careful reader. She
eschewed the Classicist writers as though they had never existed. For
her Andre Chenier was the next name in chronological order after Du
Bartas. Occasionally she showed a profundity of research that would have
done no discredit to Mr. Saintsbury or "le doux Assellineau." She was
ready to pronounce an opinion on Napol le Pyrenean or to detect a
plagiarism in Baudelaire. But she thought that Alexander Smith was still
alive, and she was curiously vague about the career of Saint Beuve.
This inequality of equipment was a thing inevitable to her isolation,
and hardly worth recording, except to show how laborious her mind was,
and how quick to make the best of small resources.
We have already seen that the "Sheaf gleaned in French Fields" attracted
the very minimum of attention in England. In France it was talked about
a little more. M. Garcin de Tassy, the famous Orientalist, who scarcely
survived Toru by twelve months, spoke of it to Mlle. Clarisse Bader,
author of a somewhat remarkable book on the position of women in ancient
Indian society. Almost simultaneously this volume fell into the hands of
Toru, and she was moved to translate it into English, for the use of
Hindus less instructed than herself. In January, 1877, she accordingly
wrote to Mlle. Bader requesting her authorization, and received a prompt
and kind reply. On the 18th of March Toru wrote again to this, her
solitary correspondent in the world of European literature, and her
letter, which has been preserved, shows that she had already descended
into the valley of the shadow of death:--
Ma constitution n'est pas forte; j'ai contracte une toux opiniatre,
il y a plus de deux ans, qui ne me quitte point. Cependant j'espere
mettre la main a l'[oe]uvre bientot. Je ne peux dire, mademoiselle,
combien votre affection,--car vous les aimez, votre livre et votre
lettre en temoignent assez,--pour mes compatriotes et mon pays me
touche; et je suis fiere de pouvoir le dire que les heroines de nos
grandes epopees sont dignes de tout honneur et de tout amour. Y
a-ti-il d'heroine plus touchante, plus aimable que Sita? Je ne le
crois pas. _Quand j'entends ma mere chanter, le soir, les vieux
chants de notre pays, je pleure presque toujours._ La plainte de
Sita, quand, bannie pour la seconde fois, elle erre dans la vaste
foret, seule, le desespoir et l'effroi dans l'ame, est si pathetique
qu'il n'y a personne, je crois, qui puisse l'entendre sans verser
des larmes. Je vous envois sous ce pli deux petites traductions du
Sanscrit, cette belle langue antique. Malheureusement j'ai ete
obligee de faire cesser mes traductions de Sanscrit, il y a six
mois. Ma sante ne me permet pas de les continuer.
These simple and pathetic words, in which the dying poetess pours out
her heart to the one friend she had, and that one gained too late, seem
as touching and as beautiful as any strain of Marceline Valmore's
immortal verse. In English poetry I do not remember anything that
exactly parallels their resigned melancholy. Before the month of March
was over, Toru had taken to her bed. Unable to write, she continued to
read, strewing her sick-room with the latest European books, and
entering with interest into the questions raised by the Societe
Asiatique of Paris in its printed Transactions. On the 30th of July she
wrote her last letter to Mlle. Clarisse Bader, and a month later, on the
30th of August, 1877, at the age of twenty-one years, six months, and
twenty-six days, she breathed her last in her father's house in
Maniktollah Street, Calcutta.
In the first distraction of grief it seemed as though her unequalled
promise had been entirely blighted, and as though she would be
remembered only by her single book. But as her father examined her
papers, one completed work after another revealed itself. First a
selection from the sonnets of the Comte de Grammont, translated into
English, turned up, and was printed in a Calcutta magazine; then some
fragments of an English story, which were printed in another Calcutta
magazine. Much more important, however, than any of these was a complete
romance, written in French, being the identical story for which her
sister Aru had proposed to make the illustrations. In the meantime Toru
was no sooner dead than she began to be famous. In May, 1878, there
appeared a second edition of the "Sheaf gleaned in French Fields," with
a touching sketch of her death, by her father; and in 1879 was
published, under the editorial care of Mlle. Clarisse Bader, the romance
of "Le Journal de Mlle. D'Arvers," forming a handsome volume of 259
pages. This book, begun, as it appears, before the family returned from
Europe, and finished nobody knows when, is an attempt to describe scenes
from modern French society, but it is less interesting as an experiment
of the fancy, than as a revelation of the mind of a young Hindu woman of
genius. The story is simple, clearly told, and interesting; the studies
of character have nothing French about them, but they are full of vigour
and originality. The description of the hero is most characteristically
Indian.--
Il est beau en effet. Sa taille est haute, mais quelques-uns la
trouveraient mince, sa chevelure noire est bouclee et tombe jusqu'a
la nuque; ses yeux noirs sont profonds et bien fendus, le front est
noble; la levre superieure, couverte par une moustache naissante et
noire, est parfaitement modelee; son menton a quelque chose de
severe; son teint est d'un blanc presque feminin, ce qui denote sa
haute naissance.
In this description we seem to recognize some Surya or Soma of Hindu
mythology, and the final touch, meaningless as applied to an European,
reminds us that in India whiteness of skin has always been a sign of
aristocratic birth, from the days when it originally distinguished the
conquering Aryas from the indigenous race of the Dasyous.
As a literary composition "Mlle. D'Arvers" deserves high commendation.
It deals with the ungovernable passion of two brothers for one placid
and beautiful girl, a passion which leads to fratricide and madness.
That it is a very melancholy and tragical story is obvious from this
brief sketch of its contents, but it is remarkable for coherence and
self-restraint no less than for vigour of treatment. Toru Dutt never
sinks to melodrama in the course of her extraordinary tale, and the
wonder is that she is not more often fantastic and unreal.
But we believe that the original English poems, which we present to the
public for the first time to-day, will be ultimately found to
constitute Toru's chief legacy to posterity. These ballads form the last
and most matured of her writings, and were left so far fragmentary at
her death that the fourth and fifth in her projected series of nine were
not to be discovered in any form among her papers. It is probable that
she had not even commenced them. Her father, therefore, to give a
certain continuity to the series, has filled up these blanks with two
stories from the "Vishnupurana," which originally appeared respectively
in the "Calcutta Review" and in the "Bengal Magazine." These are
interesting, but a little rude in form, and they have not the same
peculiar value as the rhymed octo-syllabic ballads. In these last we see
Toru no longer attempting vainly, though heroically, to compete with
European literature on its own ground, but turning to the legends of her
own race and country for inspiration. No modern Oriental has given us
so strange an insight into the conscience of the Asiatic as is presented
in the stories of "Prehlad" and of "Savitri," or so quaint a piece of
religious fancy as the ballad of "Jogadhya Uma." The poetess seems in
these verses to be chanting to herself those songs of her mother's race
to which she always turned with tears of pleasure. They breathe a Vedic
solemnity and simplicity of temper, and are singularly devoid of that
littleness and frivolity which seem, if we may judge by a slight
experience, to be the bane of modern India.
As to the merely technical character of these poems, it may be suggested
that in spite of much in them that is rough and inchoate, they show that
Toru was advancing in her mastery of English verse. Such a stanza as
this, selected out of many no less skilful, could hardly be recognized
as the work of one by whom the language was a late acquirement:--
What glorious trees! The sombre saul,
On which the eye delights to rest,--
The betel-nut, a pillar tall,
With feathery branches for a crest,--
The light-leaved tamarind spreading wide,--
The pale faint-scented bitter neem,
The seemul, gorgeous as a bride,
With flowers that have the ruby's gleam.
In other passages, of course, the text reads like a translation from
some stirring ballad, and we feel that it gives but a faint and
discordant echo of the music welling in Toru's brain. For it must
frankly be confessed that in the brief May-day of her existence she had
not time to master our language as Blanco White did, or as Chamisso
mastered German. To the end of her days, fluent and graceful as she was,
she was not entirely conversant with English, especially with the
colloquial turns of modern speech. Often a very fine thought is spoiled
for hypercritical ears by the queer turn of expression which she has
innocently given to it. These faults are found to a much smaller degree
in her miscellaneous poems. Her sonnets, here printed for the first
time, seem to me to be of great beauty, and her longer piece entitled
"Our Casuarina Tree," needs no apology for its rich and mellifluous
numbers.
It is difficult to exaggerate when we try to estimate what we have lost
in the premature death of Toru Dutt. Literature has no honours which
need have been beyond the grasp of a girl who at the age of twenty-one,
and in languages separated from her own by so deep a chasm, had produced
so much of lasting worth. And her courage and fortitude were worthy of
her intelligence. Among "last words" of celebrated people, that which
her father has recorded, "It is only the physical pain that makes me
cry," is not the least remarkable, or the least significant of strong
character. It was to a native of our island, and to one ten years senior
to Toru, to whom it was said, in words more appropriate, surely, to her
than to Oldham,
Thy generous fruits, though gathered ere their prime,
Still showed a quickness, and maturing time
But mellows what we write to the dull sweets of Rime.
That mellow sweetness was all that Toru lacked to perfect her as an
English poet, and of no other Oriental who has ever lived can the same
be said. When the history of the literature of our country comes to be
written, there is sure to be a page in it dedicated to this fragile
exotic blossom of song.
EDMUND W. GOSSE.
1881.
ANCIENT BALLADS OF HINDUSTAN.
I.
SAVITRI.
PART I.
Savitri was the only child
Of Madra's wise and mighty king;
Stern warriors, when they saw her, smiled,
As mountains smile to see the spring.
Fair as a lotus when the moon
Kisses its opening petals red,
After sweet showers in sultry June!
With happier heart, and lighter tread,
Chance strangers, having met her, past,
And often would they turn the head
A lingering second look to cast,
And bless the vision ere it fled.
What was her own peculiar charm?
The soft black eyes, the raven hair,
The curving neck, the rounded arm,
All these are common everywhere.
Her charm was this--upon her face
Childlike and innocent and fair,
No man with thought impure or base
Could ever look;--the glory there,
The sweet simplicity and grace,
Abashed the boldest; but the good
God's purity there loved to trace,
Mirrored in dawning womanhood.
In those far-off primeval days
Fair India's daughters were not pent
In closed zenanas. On her ways
Savitri at her pleasure went
Whither she chose,--and hour by hour
With young companions of her age,
She roamed the woods for fruit or flower,
Or loitered in some hermitage,
For to the Munis gray and old
Her presence was as sunshine glad,
They taught her wonders manifold
And gave her of the best they had.
Her father let her have her way
In all things, whether high or low;
He feared no harm; he knew no ill
Could touch a nature pure as snow.
Long childless, as a priceless boon
He had obtained this child at last
By prayers, made morning, night, and noon
With many a vigil, many a fast;
Would Shiva his own gift recall,
Or mar its perfect beauty ever?--
No, he had faith,--he gave her all
She wished, and feared and doubted never.
And so she wandered where she pleased
In boyish freedom. Happy time!
No small vexations ever teased,
Nor crushing sorrows dimmed her prime.
One care alone, her father felt--
Where should he find a fitting mate
For one so pure?--His thoughts long dwelt
On this as with his queen he sate.
"Ah, whom, dear wife, should we select?"
"Leave it to God," she answering cried,
"Savitri, may herself elect
Some day, her future lord and guide."
Months passed, and lo, one summer morn
As to the hermitage she went
Through smiling fields of waving corn,
She saw some youths on sport intent,
Sons of the hermits, and their peers,
And one among them tall and lithe
Royal in port,--on whom the years
Consenting, shed a grace so blithe,
So frank and noble, that the eye
Was loth to quit that sun-browned face;
She looked and looked,--then gave a sigh,
And slackened suddenly her pace.
What was the meaning--was it love?
Love at first sight, as poets sing,
Is then no fiction? Heaven above
Is witness, that the heart its king
Finds often like a lightning flash;
We play,--we jest,--we have no care,--
When hark a step,--there comes no crash,--
But life, or silent slow despair.
Their eyes just met,--Savitri past
Into the friendly Muni's hut,
Her heart-rose opened had at last--
Opened no flower can ever shut.
In converse with the gray-haired sage
She learnt the story of the youth,
His name and place and parentage--
Of royal race he was in truth.
Satyavan was he hight,--his sire
Dyoumatsen had been Salva's king,
But old and blind, opponents dire
Had gathered round him in a ring
And snatched the sceptre from his hand;
Now,--with his queen and only son
He lived a hermit in the land,
And gentler hermit was there none.
With many tears was said and heard
The story,--and with praise sincere
Of Prince Satyavan; every word
Sent up a flush on cheek and ear,
Unnoticed. Hark! The bells remind
'Tis time to go,--she went away,
Leaving her virgin heart behind,
And richer for the loss. A ray,
Shot down from heaven, appeared to tinge
All objects with supernal light,
The thatches had a rainbow fringe,
The cornfields looked more green and bright.
Savitri's first care was to tell
Her mother all her feelings new;
The queen her own fears to dispel
To the king's private chamber flew.
"Now what is it, my gentle queen,
That makes thee hurry in this wise?"
She told him, smiles and tears between,
All she had heard; the king with sighs
Sadly replied:--"I fear me much!
Whence is his race and what his creed?
Not knowing aught, can we in such
A matter delicate, proceed?"
As if the king's doubts to allay,
Came Narad Muni to the place
A few days after. Old and gray,
All loved to see the gossip's face,
Great Brahma's son,--adored of men,
Long absent, doubly welcome he
Unto the monarch, hoping then
By his assistance, clear to see.
No god in heaven, nor king on earth,
But Narad knew his history,--
The sun's, the moon's, the planets' birth
Was not to him a mystery.
"Now welcome, welcome, dear old friend,
All hail, and welcome once again!"
The greeting had not reached its end,
When glided like a music-strain
Savitri's presence through the room.--
"And who is this bright creature, say,
Whose radiance lights the chamber's gloom--
Is she an Apsara or fay?"
"No son thy servant hath, alas!
This is my one,--my only child;"--
"And married?"--"No."--"The seasons pass,
Make haste, O king,"--he said, and smiled.
"That is the very theme, O sage,
In which thy wisdom ripe I need;
Seen hath she at the hermitage
A youth to whom in very deed
Her heart inclines."--"And who is he?"
"My daughter, tell his name and race,
Speak as to men who best love thee."
She turned to them her modest face,
And answered quietly and clear.--
"Ah, no! ah, no!--It cannot be--
Choose out another husband, dear,"--
The Muni cried,--"or woe is me!"
"And why should I? When I have given
My heart away, though but in thought,
Can I take back? Forbid it, Heaven!
It were a deadly sin, I wot.
And why should I? I know no crime
In him or his."--"Believe me, child,
My reasons shall be clear in time,
I speak not like a madman wild;
Trust me in this."--"I cannot break
A plighted faith,--I cannot bear
A wounded conscience."--"Oh, forsake
This fancy, hence may spring despair."--
"It may not be."--The father heard
By turns the speakers, and in doubt
Thus interposed a gentle word,--
"Friend should to friend his mind speak out,
Is he not worthy? tell us."--"Nay,
All worthiness is in Satyavan,
And no one can my praise gainsay:
Of solar race--more god than man!
Great Soorasen, his ancestor,
And Dyoumatsen his father blind
Are known to fame: I can aver
No kings have been so good and kind."
"Then where, O Muni, is the bar?
If wealth be gone, and kingdom lost,
His merit still remains a star,
Nor melts his lineage like the frost.
For riches, worldly power, or rank
I care not,--I would have my son
Pure, wise, and brave,--the Fates I thank
I see no hindrance, no, not one."
"Since thou insistest, King, to hear
The fatal truth,--I tell you,--I,
Upon this day as rounds the year
The young Prince Satyavan shall die."
This was enough. The monarch knew
The future was no sealed book
To Brahma's son. A clammy dew
Spread on his brow,--he gently took
Savitri's palm in his, and said:
"No child can give away her hand,
A pledge is nought unsanctioned;
And here, if right I understand,
There was no pledge at all,--a thought,
A shadow,--barely crossed the mind--
Unblamed, it may be clean forgot,
Before the gods it cannot bind.
"And think upon the dreadful curse
Of widowhood; the vigils, fasts,
And penances; no life is worse
Than hopeless life,--the while it lasts.
Day follows day in one long round,
Monotonous and blank and drear;
Less painful were it to be bound
On some bleak rock, for aye to hear--
Without one chance of getting free--
The ocean's melancholy voice!
Mine be the sin,--if sin there be,
But thou must make a different choice."
In the meek grace of virginhood
Unblanched her cheek, undimmed her eye,
Savitri, like a statue, stood,
Somewhat austere was her reply.
"Once, and once only, all submit
To Destiny,--'tis God's command;
Once, and once only, so 'tis writ,
Shall woman pledge her faith and hand;
Once, and once only, can a sire
Unto his well-loved daughter say,
In presence of the witness fire,
I give thee to this man away.
"Once, and once only, have I given
My heart and faith--'tis past recall;
With conscience none have ever striven,
And none may strive, without a fall.
Not the less solemn was my vow
Because unheard, and oh! the sin
Will not be less, if I should now
Deny the feeling felt within.
Unwedded to my dying day
I must, my father dear, remain;
'Tis well, if so thou will'st, but say
Can man balk Fate, or break its chain?
"If Fate so rules, that I should feel
The miseries of a widow's life,
Can man's device the doom repeal?
Unequal seems to be a strife,
Between Humanity and Fate;
None have on earth what they desire;
Death comes to all or soon or late;
And peace is but a wandering fire;
Expediency leads wild astray;
The Right must be our guiding star;
Duty our watchword, come what may;
Judge for me, friends,--as wiser far."
She said, and meekly looked to both.
The father, though he patient heard,
To give the sanction still seemed loth,
But Narad Muni took the word.
"Bless thee, my child! 'Tis not for us
To question the Almighty will,
Though cloud on cloud loom ominous,
In gentle rain they may distil."
At this, the monarch--"Be it so!
I sanction what my friend approves;
All praise to Him, whom praise we owe;
My child shall wed the youth she loves."