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NOVEMBER, 1876.]
BHARTŘIHARI'S VAIRAGYA SATAKAM.
307
Miscellaneous Stanzas. The man of firm and constant soul,
Who, nought possessing, nought desires,
Nor burns with passion's raging fires, Finds happiness from pole to pole.
Here sounds the tuneful lyre, and there loud
shrieks appal, Here is a sage discourse, and there a drunken
brawl, Here, maids in prime of youth, there wrinkled
forms you meet; Of what consists our life, of bitter or of sweet?
Time passes never to recede, But careless mortals take no heed; The woes that in past years we bore Leave us no wiser than before ; What folly do we lay aside ? Though sorely by our errors tried, We learn not prudence, but begin Once more a fresh career of sin.
With gestures forced, cracked voice, and smil
ing face, Your part is now to su for rich men's grace, Half fool, half knave; but when your hair is
grey What part in life's great force remains to
play? Breath, fortnne, life, and youth are swiftly ebb
ing tides, In this unstable world virtue alone abides.
The belly clamours for its rights, and will not
be denied, Its keen-set longings cat the purse that holds
our human pride, It withers virtue as the moon the lotus of the
day. The mantling vine of modesty it lops and shreds
away.
Śiva's a guiding lamp, that burns in hermits'
hearts, Dispels delusion's gloom and light and heat
imparts, He shrivelled like a moth the frivolous god of
Love, His flame's the moon's white streak that gleams
his crest above.
Let's live on offerings, sleeping on the ground, Clothed with the air, and not in courts be
found.
"Rise up and bear one second's space
"Grim penury's awful load; "Let me o'erwearied take thy placo
“In Plato's dark abode." A poor man thus a corpse bespake;
The corpse,.preferring death To want, would not its silence break
For all his waste of breath.
My soul, for Fortune sigh no more, that blind
capricious fair, That dwells in princes' nods and frowns, un
stable as the air ; Rags are the wise man's "coat of proof," in
these from door to door We beg through wide Banâras' streets, and one
hand holds our store.
Siva is chief of those who fleshly lusts despise, Though linked to Umâ's form by everlasting
form by everlasting ties; We, racked with venom-pangs which Cupid's
arrow brings, Can neither leave nor yet enjoy these worldly
things.
That tortoise really lives its life which bears
the world on high, We bless the pole-star's birth, round which re
volves the starry sky, But all those buzzing summer flies, that serve
not others' gain, Dead to all useful purposes e'en from their
birth remain. "My house is high, my sons renowned, my
wealth beyond compare," "My wife is lovely, young my age"-thus
thoughtless men declare,
They smile and weep to gain their end, Cajole, but never trust, a friend, So wise men keep from women far, Shunning them like the funeral jar. |
$ The moon patronizes the kumuda, but is an enemy to the lotus which comes out in the day.
|| Used in cemeteries, and therefore impure.
Henry VI., Pt. II. Act IV. Sc. 2.
