RAVAGES OF TIME.
Ráma rejoined:—Time is a self-willed sportsman as a prince, who is
inaccessible to dangers and whose powers are unlimited.
2. This world is as it were a forest and sporting ground of time,
wherein the poor deluded worldlings are caught in his snare like a body
of wounded stags.
3. The ocean of universal deluge is a pleasure-pond of time, and the
submarine fires bursting therein as lotus flowers (serve to beautify
that dismal scene).
4. Time makes his breakfast of this vapid and stale earth, flavoured
with the milk and curd of the seas of those names.
5. His wife _Chandi_ (Hecate) with her train of _Mátris_ (furies),
ranges all about this wide world as a ferocious tigress (with horrid
devastation).
6. The earth with her waters is like a bowl of wine in the hand of
time, dressed and flavoured with all sorts of lilies and lotuses.
7. The lion with his huge body and startling mane, his loud roaring and
tremendous groans, seems as a caged bird of sport in the hand of time.
8. The Mahákála like a playful young _Kokila_ (cuckoo), appears in the
figure of the blue autumnal sky, and warbling as sweet as the notes of
a lute of gourd (in the music of the spheres).
9. The restless bow of death is found flinging its woeful arrows (darts
of death) with ceaseless thunder claps on all sides.
10. This world is like a forest, wherein sorrows are ranging about as
playful apes, and time like a sportive prince in this forest, is now
roving, now walking, now playing and now killing his games.