He then intrusts the cloud with the tender words that he would breathe; bids it tell his beloved how he sees her in the rippling brooks, how
“O’er the rude stone her pictured beauties rise;”
and finally he charges his messenger to console her afflicted heart with assurances of his unabated love, and to hasten back with tidings that may relieve his soul of its anxiety. The cloud obeys; but meanwhile the supreme deity learns of the message, repents of his severity, restores the exile to his wife, and blesses the pair with ceaseless joy.
Kâlidâsa also wrote three epics of a romantic character, one of them on the adventures of Nala and his devoted Damayanti. Well does he merit the title conferred on him by his admiring countrymen,—“the Bridegroom of Poesy.”
Jayadeva (jī-ă-dā’vă), a poet probably of more recent times, if not equal to Kâlidâsa, yet has given us in Gîtagovinda one of the most enchanting idyls ever written. In this Song of the Shepherd Govinda, the form assumed by the god Krishna, are set forth in voluptuous colors the adventures of the deity and nine shepherdesses, his beautiful attendants. The whole is supposed to be a mystical allegory.
The high estimation in which Jayadeva is held, may be inferred from the following eulogy by an Oriental critic: “Whatever is delightful in the modes of music, whatever is exquisite in the sweet art of love, whatever is graceful in the strains of poetry—all that let the happy and wise learn from the songs of Jayadeva.” (See Arnold’s “Indian Poetry,” p. 86.)
Whittier has furnished us the following spirited version of a Hindoo lyric by a poet who flourished in the third century of our era, and who, if we may judge by his writings, had conceptions of God and duty not unworthy of a Christian bard.
GIVING AND TAKING.
“Who gives and hides the giving hand,