A History of Sanskrit Literature c15.37

c15.37

In all this lyrical poetry the plant and animal world plays an important part and is treated with much charm. Of flowers, the lotus is the most conspicuous. One of these stanzas, for example, describes the day-lotuses as closing their calyx-eyes in the evening, because unwilling to see the sun, their spouse and benefactor, sink down bereft of his rays. Another describes with pathetic beauty the dream of a bee: "The night will pass, the fair dawn will come, the sun will rise, the lotuses will laugh;" while a bee thus mused within the calyx, an elephant, alas! tore up the lotus plant.