THE MESSENGER CLOUD.

"The subject of the poem is simple and ingenious: a Yaksha, a divinity of an inferior order, an attendant upon the god of riches, Kuvera, and one of a class which, as it appears from the poem, is characterized by a benevolent spirit, a gentle temper, and an affectionate disposition, has incurred the displeasure of his sovereign, and has been condemned by him to a twelvemonths' exile from his home. In the solitary but sacred forest in which he spends the period of his banishment, the Yaksha's most urgent care is to find an opportunity of conveying intelligence and consolation to his wife; and, in the wildness of his grief, he fancies that he discovers a friendly messenger in a cloud-one of those noble masses which seem almost instinct with life, as they traverse a tropical sky in the commencement of the Monsoon, and move with slow and solemn progression from the equatorial ocean to the snows of the Himalaya. In the spirit of this bold but not unnatural personification, the Yaksha addresses the Cloud, and entrusts to it the message he yearns to despatch to the absent object of his attachment. He describes the direction in which the Cloud is to travel-one marked out for it indeed, by the eternal laws of nature; and takes this opportunity of alluding to the most important scenes of Hindu mythology and tradition;-not with the dullness of prosaïc detail, but with that true poetic pencil which, by a few happy touches, brings the subject of the description vividly before the mind's eye. Arrived at the end of the journey, the condition of his beloved wife is the theme of the exile's anticipations, and is dwelt upon with equal delicacy and truth; and the poem terminates with the message that is intended to assuage her grief and animate her hopes. The whole of this part of the composition is distinguished by the graceful expression of natural and amiable feelings, and cannot fail to leave a favourable impression of the national character." H. H. WILSON.

I.

Dark are the shadows of the trees that wave

Their pendent branches upon Rama's Hill,

Veiling the stream where Sita loved to lave

Sweet limbs that hallowed as they touched the rill:

There a sad spirit, whom his master's will,

Wroth for a service he had rendered ill,

An exile from his happy home had torn,

Was sternly doomed for twelve long months to mourn

Of all his glories reft, of his dear love forlorn.

II.

Some weary days, intolerably slow,

The listless exile all alone had past:
The bracelet clung not to the arm that woe
Had withered, and the weeping and the fast;
When on a day of June he upward cast
His aching eyes, lo! on the mountain lay

A glorious cloud embracing it, as vast

As some huge elephant that stoops in play

To trample down the bank that bars his onward way.

III.

Once and again his wistful eyes he raised,
Checking the tear-drop in her secret springs,
And on the jasmine's sweet restorer gazed
The mournful servant of the King of Kings-'
Mournful, for if the first seen rain-cloud brings
Trouble and doubt to him whose arms are prest
Around his love, O, judge what torture wrings
His bosom far from her he loves the best,

A prey to longing love and fear and wild unrest.

IV.

Then cheered by hope he culled each budding spray,

And the last blooms that lingered in the brake,

And hastened humbly to the Cloud to pray

With offerings, trusting for his darling's sake,

While, Welcome, friendship's sweetest word he spake, That he would waft his message, as a spell

Whence life and comfort the lone bride might take:

That he would calm her troubled heart and tell

That were she only present all with him were well.

1 A title of Kuvera, the God of Wealth.

V.

Blame not the Spirit, if his wild despair
Urged his love-laden bosom to complain
To the dark Child of vapour, sun, and air:
Have ye ne'er learnt that hopeless love is fain
To shriek the lamentation, wrung by pain,

In nature's senseless ear; to weep and moan
To valley and to mountain, and to rain

Tears on the flowers and call on stock and stone

To suffer with his woe and echo

groan for groan ?

VI.

"O thou of ever-changing form," he cried, "I know thee, offspring of a glorious race,

The mighty counsellor close by the side

:

Of royal Indra is thine honoured place.
By cruel fate torn from my love's embrace

I fly to thee for comfort in my woe:

Better to sue and be denied the grace

By one of gentle blood whose worth we know,

Than stoop to bear away rich guerdon from the low.

VII.

Dear friend of all whom flames of anguish burn,

If thou hast power and pity, as of old,

On me, on me, thy tender glances turn,

Who mourn the anger of the God of Gold;

To distant Alaka fly uncontrolled,

Where dwell my brethren in their stately halls,

There let my message to my love be told

'Mid gilded palaces and marble walls

On which the silver light of Siva's crescent' falls.

VIII.

There wilt thou see the melancholy bride
Of me, thy brother, thin and ghastly pale;
Her only care-for every joy has died-

To count the dark days' slowly lengthening tale.
She lingers yet; for woman's heart, though frail
As the fair flower that, nipt by winter's chill,
Bends her sweet head before the rude rough gale,
If hope be left her in her misery, still

Clings fondly to the life despair alone can kill.

1 The crest of Siva is the new moon, and the Himalaya mountains, amid which Alaka is situated, are his favourite haunts.