40. Strings of days, nights and stars, resembling beads and bracelets of white and black lotuses, are continually turning round the arm of time.
41. Time (as a vulture) looks upon the world as (the carcase of) a ram, with its mountains, seas, sky and earth as its four horns, and the stars as its drops of blood which it drinks day by day.
42. Time destroys youth as the moon shuts the petals of the lotus. It destroys life as the lion kills the elephant: there is nothing however insignificant that time steals not away.
43. Time after sporting for a Kalpa period in the act of killing and crushing of all living beings, comes to lose its own existence and becomes extinct in the eternity of the Spirit of spirits.
44. Time after a short rest and respite reappears as the creator, preserver, destroyer and remembrancer of all. He shows the shapes of all things whether good or bad, keeping his own nature beyond the knowledge of all. Thus doth time expand and preserve and finally dissolve all things by way of sport.
CHAPTER XXIV.
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.