University of Virginia Library

Once on a time there was an Indian King,
Dushmanta, who being young, and quick to love,
Youth's strength, or weakness, wedded in hot haste
A Brahman's daughter, in a holy grove,
Whereof she was the priestess. She was fair
As the white Ganges blossom whose pure leaves
Are woven of moonbeams; fair she was, and sweet
As the first tender jasmin whose rare scent
Persuades the distant bee to seek it out,
And hoard its honey in his hidden hive,
But shy withal as the young antelope,
That in the sacred precincts of this wood
Fled from all steps, save only those that fell
From her light feet. Such was Sacontala,
To whom the great Dushmanta, King of Ind,
Smitten with passion, did espouse himself.
This is the prologue of a tragedy,
Which the strong hand that wrote a Winter's Tale
Might well have written, called The Fatal Ring.
The product of a Sanskrit poet's pen,
It turns upon the short-lived happiness
Of this mismated pair, who might have known,
At least, the man, as elder, should have known,
That, unless wife and husband be at one,
Of the same station, whether high or low,
Of the same race, alike in heart and brain,
The ring of marriage is a fatal ring.
So to Dushmanta and Sacontala
It proved before the crescent of the moon
Thrice rounding reached the full; above their couch
It rose, and shone, and set, till one dark night
Dushmanta came not; when it rose again
It shone upon Sacontala alone,
Deserted wife, who wet her couch with tears.
Wherein she failed to hold the man she loved
She knew not. Neither man nor woman knows
Why love, which comes and goes at its own will,
Once gone, like his, refuses to return.
She may have been too humble, he too proud;
For there is that in kings which makes them set
A greater value on the things they give
Than on the richer treasure they receive.

At length her father, who was old and wise,
Seeing Dushmanta never sent for her,
Nor ever came to their still hermitage,
Determined, after meditating long,
To send her to her lord, which was not wise;
But she, true woman and true wife to him,
Though by his strange desertion hurt to death,
Proud where she was once humble, liked it not,
And, following her own counsel, which was wise,
Would not have sought, nor seen him till the hour
When he, unkind no longer, should return,
And say, “Forgive me, dear Sacontala.”
Yet being obedient, as daughters were
In that old time and that far land, she went
Whither her father sent her, loth to leave
Her half-sheathed lilies, and her unseen bird,
And the coy antelope, that, bolder grown,
Would have gone with her out of that close shade,
Into the great, bright, noisy, unknown world.

Veiled, as became a young and modest bride,
But clad in a rich mantle, such as Spring
Wears when in mid-May blooms men stop and say,
“Spring will be Summer soon,” Sacontala,
By two grave Brahmans led, her father's sons,
Began her journey, which, through groves of palms
That fringed the roadway, and through millet-fields
Where busy husbandmen were sowing seed,
Past bamboo huts where children were at play,
Stone temples, where old priests were chanting hymns,
Pouring libations to the bounteous gods,
Led to the stately city of her lord,
Which, in its golden splendor seen afar,
Like the beclouded but uprising sun,
Reaching, they enter by the eastern gate.
A glorious city, into whose broad streets
They passed, Sacontala with timid steps;
For, faint with travel and a heavy heart,
Bearing a secret burden in her breast,
She faltered; but her Brahman guards were firm,
Not comprehending why she suffered so,
Austere as in the rustic solitude,
Where, meditating on morality,
Their studious but unfruitful years were spent.
So into and along the spacious streets
Swarming all day with jostling life they went,
Past booths and markets gay with fruit and flowers,
The shops where native workmen wrought in gold,
Setting of jewels, diamonds, Ormuz pearls,
Bazars where foreign merchants showed their stuffs,
Silks, satins, woven in barbaric looms,
The lordly pleasure-houses of great lords,
The palaces of princes, on, and on,
Till, last, they gained the palace of the king.
Silently entering through more silent guards,
Armed with tall bows, tough shields, and horrent spears,
Through long-arched chambers, where priests murmured prayers,
To where, like Brahma on his judgment-seat,
Whither all might come at all times, and demand
Justice, or mercy, boons of life and death,
Surrounded with his glory, sate the king.

What passed between Dushmanta sitting there,
And his forsaken queen, Sacontala,
Our Sanskrit poet in his tragedy
Paints with pathetic force in simple words,
Which my best English fails to reproduce,
So poor my craft beside his perfect art.
An undercurrent of enchantment runs
Through his sweet scenes, wherein Sacontala,
While dipping water from a woodland stream
To quench her thirst, cup-wise, in her white hands,
Dropped her betrothal ring, whereby she lost,
Her husband's love—but that was lost before.
For, disappointed from the first, he found
The ring of marriage was a fatal ring.

They met, and parted, not as king and queen,
But rather as lesser people meet and part,
Who, when estranged, as they were, separate,
Each picking up the broken thread of life;
Women, their daily, narrow household tasks,
And men the broader duties of mankind.
Like one who, gliding in a soft, sweet sleep,
Past shores of summer rest he wots not of,
Reaches the happy world of heavenly dreams,
Whose only lord is love—to find love dead,
With no remembrance of his perished power,
Not even the ashes in his broken urn—
Such was Dushmanta's desolated heart.
Oh, what the soul of poor Sacontala?

Along the circuit of seven troubled years,
Wherethrough, like a fading Spring in silver mist,
There wavers the shadowy boscage of a wood,
Where mother-parrots in the pendulous nests
Feed their unfledged but ever clamorous young,
And where the vision of a woman is,
Clad in a roseate robe of woven bark,
Morning in her wan cheeks, and more than night
In the dark splendor of her drooping eyes,—
This past, we are in a forest, where we see
A child, but of no childly countenance,
Whom two pale women struggle to detain,
In vain, so hard his clutch upon their hands,
Playful, but powerful, as the lion's whelp,
Which, with torn mane, he haled a moment since
From the half-suckled nipple of a lioness.
“Open your jaws, that I may count your teeth,
Cowardly cub!” To whom one woman said:
“Intractable child, why dost thou so torment
The wild, young creatures of this hallowed spot,
As dear to us as Camadeva's doves.
Well have the Brahmans called you the all-tamer.”

Here, like a presence stealing through the place,
The shadow of a ruler, unto whom
Life had grown lamentable since he lost—
What precious treasure had this monarch lost?
His dreams were of an unknown hermitage,
Where wandered an unknown woman, whom the bees
Honored like the honey in the lotus flower;
Here elephants that trampled trees, and there
Wild buffaloes wallowing in shallow pools;
A penitential voice that would be heard;
Kinghood abandoned, like the winter wind;
The supplicating trust that weighs down kings,
Who fail to rightly govern the sea-girt world,
On whom the sole support of all mankind
Rests like the largest of the Himalayas.
Then spoke Dushmanta: “Why is my fond heart
So drawn to him? He cannot be my son,
For I am childless, and my race is dead.”

“The lioness will rend you like a reed,
If you do not let loose her tawny whelp.”
“I fear her not.” Whereat he bit his lip,
And glared defiance from his ireful eyes.
“A valorous child!” the brave Dushmanta said:
“Dear boy, release that royal prince.” “Not so.”
Seizing the loose nape of the little lion,
The lad rose suddenly on his sturdy feet,
And cuffed the whimpering creature, right and left.
“There are marks of empire in his baby palms,
And the round of sovranty is on his brow.”
More had been said, had not the antelope
That browsed near by, in terror snapped its chain,
Welded of silver linked with costly stones,
And flown afar to lone Sacontala,
Its gentle mistress, gentler than itself.

Meantime, Dushmanta bent his stoutest bow,
Stringed with its arrowy lightnings, self-restrained,
Because the hour appointed was not come.
“Great love I bear this uncontrollable child
Who should be mine, but is not! Great would be
His inarticulate prattle and small laugh.”
“Command him to set free the lion's cub.”
“Why wilt thou, boy, dishonor thus thy sire?
Only the hooded snake with forked tongue
Infests the boughs of the odorous sandal-tree.”
Whereat Dushmanta in his mighty grip
Caught the more mighty grasp of the boy's hand.
“Marvel of marvels!” “Why this outcry, pray?”
“Behold the curious likeness of this child
To thy most royal self, which not before
Hath bloomed with grace upon him.” Here the king
Stooped his tall height, uplifting to his breast
The boy, and questioned him about his kin.

But now the fawn, no more alarmed, but brave
As the freed whelp, brought on Sacontala.
Wondering to find her husband standing there,
As in her joyous vision long ago,
And kneeling: “Forgive me, dear Sacontala,
Wronged as thou wert, and art, but not again,
For my right mind came back with the lost ring,
Found”—But we know how all lost rings are found,
From that of Gyges to the richer one
The Phrygian monarch dropped among the reeds,
That whispered his long secrets to the wind.
This late-recovered circlet was not now
An ominous but ever-fortunate ring,
So strong the triple love that bound the hearts
Of glad Sacontala and great Dushmanta,
And that young conqueror of the lion's cub.