'Ah me I o'erwhelmed with shame and weak
With wounds,' I cried, 'I scarce can speak.
My hapless brother once and I
Our strength of flight resolved to try.
And by our foolish pride impelled
Our way through realms of ether held.
We vowed before the saints who tread
The wilds about Kailása's head,
That we with following wings would chase
The swift sun to his resting place.
Up on our soaring pinions through
The fields of cloudless air we flew.
Beneath us far, and far away,
Like chariot wheels bright cities lay,
Whence in wild snatches rose the song
Of women mid the gay-clad throng,
With sounds of sweetest music blent
And many a tinkling ornament.
Then as our rapid wings we strained
The pathway of the sun we gained,
Beneath us all the earth was seen
Clad in her garb of tender green,
And every river in her bed
Meandered like a silver thread.
We looked on Meru far below.
And Vindhya and the Lord of Snow,
Like elephants that bend to cool
Their fever in a lilied pool.
But fervent heat and toil o'ercame
The vigour of each yielding frame,
Our weary hearts began to quail,
And wildered sense to reel and fail.
We knew not, fainting and distressed,
The north or south or east or west.
With a great strain mine eyes I turned
Where the fierce sun before me burned,
And seemed to my astonished eyes
The equal of the earth in size. 1b
At length, o'erpowered, Jatáyus fell
Without a word to say farewell,
And when to earth I saw him hie
I followed headlong from the sky. 2b
With sheltering wings I intervened
And from the sun his body screened,
But lost, for heedless folly doomed,
My pinions which the heat consumed.
ln Janasthán, I hear them say,
My hapless brother fell and lay.
I, pinionless and faint and weak,
Dropped upon Vindhya's woody peak.
Now with my swift wings burnt away,
Reft of my brother and my sway.
From this tall mountain's summit I
Will cast me headlong down and die.
389:1 Mátarisva is identified with Váyu, the
wind. 389:1b Of course not equal to the whole earth,
says the Commentator, but equal to
Janasthán. 389:2b This appears to be the Indian form of
the stories of Phaethon and Daedalus and
Icarus.