Let the clouds fall in torrents, thunder roar,
And heaven's red bolt dash fiercely to the ground,
The dauntless damsel faithful love inspires
Treads boldly on, nor dreads the maddening storm.
Víta. Like an invading prince, who holds his court
Within the city of his humbled foe,
Yon mighty cloud, advancing with the wind,
With store of arrowy shower, with thundering drums,
And blazing streamers, marches to assail
In his own heavens the monarch of the night.
Vas. Nay, nay, not so; I rather read it thus;—
The clouds that, like unwieldy elephants,
Roll their inflated masses grumbling on,
Or whiten with the migratory troop
Of hovering cranes, teach anguish to the heart.
The storks' shrill cry sounds like the plaintive tabor
To her who muses on her lord's return.
Víta. Behold, where yonder ponderous cloud assumes
The stature of the elephant, the storks
Entwine a fillet for his front, and waves
The lightning like a chouri o'er his head.
Vas. Observe, my friend, the day is swallowed up
By these deep shades, dark as the dripping leaf
Of the taurála tree, and, like an elephant
That cowering shuns the battle's arrowy sleet,
So shrinks the scattering ant-hill from the shower. …
In sooth, I think the firmament dissolves:
Melted by Indra's scorching bolt, it falls
In unexhausted torrents. Now the cloud
Ascends—now stoops—now roars aloud in thunder—
Now sheds its streams—now frowns with deeper gloom,
Full of fantastic change, like one new-raised
By fortune's fickle favours.
Víta. Now the sky
With lightning flames, now laughs with whitening storks,
Now glows with Indra's painted bow that hurls
Its hundred shafts—now rattles with his bolt—
Now loud it chafes with rushing winds, and now,
With clustering clouds that roll their spiry folds
Like sable snakes along, it thickens dark
As if 'twere clothed with vapours such as spread
When incense soars in circling wreaths to heaven."
To exhaust such descriptive passages, even in such Indian plays as have been translated into European languages, would be a long and rather monotonous task. At the end of Act V. in this same play two similar descriptive passages are put into the mouth of Chárudatta, In Vikrama and Urvasí (or "The Hero and the Nymph"),
