Valmiki Ramayana 4.47.8

4.47.8

na santi mahiṣā yatra na mṛgā na ca hastinaḥ
śārdūlāḥ pakṣiṇo vāpi ye cānye vanagocarāḥ

But Hanumánl onward pressed
With Tára, Angad, and the rest,
Through Vindhya's pathless glens he sped
And left no spot unvisited.
He gazed from every mountain height,
He sought each cavern dark as night,
And wandered through the bloomy shade
By pool and river and cascade,
But, though they sought in every place,
Of Sitáthey found no trace.
On fruit and woodland berries fed
Through many a lonely wild they sped,
And reached at last, untouched by fear,
A desert terrible and drear:
A fruitless waste, a land of gloom
Where trees were bare of leaf and bloom
Where every scanty stream was dried,
And niggard earth her roots denied.
No elephants through all the ground,
No buffaloes or deer are found.
There roams no tiger, pard, or bear,
No creature of the wood is there.
No bird displays his glittering wings,
No tree, no shrub, no creeper springs.
There rise no lilies from the flood,
Resplendent with their flower and bud,
Where the delighted bees may throng
About the fragrance with their song.
There lived a hermit Kandu named,
For truth and wealth of penance famed.
Whom fervent zeal and holy rite
Had dowered with all-surpassing might.
His little son, a ten year child--
So chanced it--perished in the wild.
His death with fury stirred the sage,
Who cursed the forest in his rage,
Doomed from that hour to shelter none,
A waste for bird and beast to shun.