"My feet with the dances are weary,
The music has dropped from the song,
There is no more delight in the lute-strings,
Sweet Shadows! what thing has gone wrong?
The wings of the wind have left fanning
The palms of the glade;
They are dead, and the blossoms seem dying
In the place where we played.
"We will play no more, beautiful Shadows!
A fancy came solemn and sad,
More sweet, with unspeakable longings,
Than the best of the pleasures we had:
I am not now the Krishna who kissed you;
That exquisite dream,—
The Vision I saw in my dancing—
Has spoiled what you seem.
"Ah! delicate phantoms that cheated
With eyes that looked lasting and true,
I awake,—I have seen her,—my angel—
Farewell to the wood and to you!
Oh, whisper of wonderful pity!
Oh, fair face that shone!
Though thou be a vision, Divinest!
This vision is done."
(Here ends that Sarga of the Gîta Govinda entitled
Kleshakeshavo.)
SARGA THE THIRD.
MUGDHAMADHUSUDANO.
KRISHNA TROUBLED.
Thereat,—as one who welcomes to her throne
A new-made Queen, and brings before it bound
Her enemies,—so Krishna in his heart
Throned Radha; and—all treasonous follies chained—
He played no more with those first play-fellows:
But, searching through the shadows of the grove
For loveliest Radha,—when he found her not,
Faint with the quest, despairing, lonely, lorn,
And pierced with shame for wasted love and days,
He sate by Jumna, where the canes are thick,
And sang to the wood-echoes words like these: