Page:TheBirth of the War-God.djvu/22

But still the Monarch durst not, could not brine:
His child, unsought, to Heaven's supremest King;
But as a good man fears his earnest prayer
Should rise unheeded, and with thoughtful care
Seeks for some friend his eager suit to aid—
Thus great Himálaya in his awe delayed.

⁠Since the sad moment when his gentle bride
In the full glory of her beauty died,
The mournful Siva in the holy grove
Had dwelt in solitude, and known not love:
High on that hill where musky breezes throw
Their balmy odours o'er eternal snow,
Where Heavenly Minstrels pour their notes divine
And rippling Ganga laves the mountain pine.
Clad in a coat of skin all rudely wrought
He lived for prayer and solitary thought;
The faithful band that served the Hermit's will
Lay in the hollows of the rocky hill.
Where from the clefts the dark bitumen flowed;
Tinted with mineral dyes their bodies glowed.
Their garb, rude mantles of the birch-tree's rind,
With bright red garlands was their hair entwined ;
The holy Bull before his master's feet
Shook the hard-frozen earth with echoins: feet.
And as he heard the lion's roarins; swell
In distant thunder from the rocky dell.
In angry pride he raised his voice of fear
And from the mountain drove the startled deer.
⁠Bright fire—a shape the God would sometimes wear
Who takes eight various forms—was glowing there;