and between them are silken swings constructed for the light form of youthful beauty; the yellow jasmine, the graceful málatí, the full-blossomed malliká, the blue clitoria, spontaneous shed their flowers and strew the ground with a carpet more lovely than any in the groves of Indra; the reservoir glows with the red lotus-blossoms, like the dawn with the fiery beams of the rising sun; and here the asoka tree, with its rich crimson blossoms, shines like a young warrior bathed in the sanguine shower of the furious fight."
The fifth act of the same play opens with the following speech of Chárudatta:—
"A heavy storm impends; the gathering gloom
Delights the peafowl and distracts the swan
Not yet prepared for periodic flight;
And these deep shades contract with sad despondence
The heart that pines in absence. Through the air,
A rival Kesava,[1] the purple cloud
Rolls stately on, girded by golden lightning
As by his yellow garb, and bearing high
The long white line of storks. …
From the dark womb in rapid fall descend
The silvery drops, and glittering in the gleams
Shot from the lightning, bright and fitful, sparkle
Like a rich fringe rent from the robe of heaven;
The firmament is filled with scattered clouds,
And, as they fly before the wind, their forms,
As in a picture, image various shapes,
The semblances of storks and soaring swans,
Of dolphins and the monsters of the deep,
Of dragons vast and pinnacles and towers."
- ↑ Crinilus, a name of Krishna, perhaps alluding to his graceful tresses, as Professor Wilson notes. Although descriptive passages such as the above and following are strictly without parallel in the Shaksperian drama, the student of Shakspere will be reminded of the lines in Antony and Cleopatra (Act. IV. sc. xii.):—
"Sometime we see a cloud that's dragonish:
A vapour, sometime, like a bear, or lion,
A tower'd citadel, a pendant rock,
A forked mountain, or blue promontory
With trees upon 't, that nod unto the world,
And mock our eyes with air: thou hast seen these signs;
They are black vesper's pageants."
