The Birth of Kumāra 3.48

3.48

avṛṣṭisaṃrambhamivāmbuvāhamapāmivādhāramanuttaraṅgam |
antaścarāṇāṃ marutāṃ nirodhānnivātaniṣkampamiva pradīpam ||

The Hermit's servant hasted to the door.
In his left hand a branch of gold he bore—
He touched his lip for silence—Peace! be still!
Nor mar the quiet of this holy hill,—
He spake—no dweller of the forest stirred,
No wild bee murmured, hushed was every bird—
Still and unmoved, as in a picture stood
All life that breathed within the waving wood.
As some great Monarch when he goes to war
Shuns the fierce aspect of a baleful star,
So Káma hid him from the Hermit's eye,
And sought a path that led unnoticed by.
Where tangled flowers and clustering trailers spread
Their grateful canopy o'er Siva's head.
Bent on his hardy enterprise, with awe
The Three-eyed Lord—great Penitent—he saw:
Where on a mound a tiger's skin was laid.
Sate the stern God beneath a pine-tree's shade.
Absorbed in holiest thought, erect and still,
The Hermit rested on the gentle hill;
His shoulders drooping down—each foot was bent
Beneath the body of the Penitent;
With open palms the hands were firmly pressed,
As though a Lotus lay upon his breast:
A double rosary in each ear—behind
With wreathing serpents were his locks entwined;
His coat of hide shone blacker to the view
Against his neck of brightly beaming blue;
How wild the look, how terrible the frown
Of his dark eyebrows bending sternly down!
How fiercely glared his eyes, unmoving blaze
Fixed in Devotion's meditating gaze!
Calm as a full cloud resting on a hill,
A waveless lake when every breeze is still,
Like a torch burning in a sheltered spot—
So still was He, unmoving, breathing not.
So full the stream of marvellous glory poured
From the bright forehead of that mighty Lord,
Pale seemed the crescent Moon upon his head,
And slenderer than a slender Lotus thread.
At all the body's nine-fold gates of sense
He had barred in the pure Intelligence,
To ponder on the Soul which sages call
Eternal Spirit, highest, over all.