An untimely storm is gathering. For see!...

An untimely storm is gathering. For see!

The peacocks gaze and lift their fans on high;

The swans forget their purpose to depart;

The untimely storm afflicts the blackened sky,

And the wistful lover's heart.

The wet bull's belly wears no deeper dye;

In flashing lightning's golden mantle clad,

While cranes, his buglers, make the heaven glad,

The cloud, a second Vishnu, mounts the sky.

As dark as Vishnu's form, with circling cranes

To trumpet him, instead of bugle strains,

And garmented in lightning's silken robe.

Approaches now the harbinger of rains.

When lightning's lamp is lit, the silver river

Impetuous falls from out the cloudy womb;

Like severed lace from heaven-cloaking gloom,

It gleams an instant, then is gone forever.

Like shoaling fishes, or like dolphins shy,

Or like to swans, toward heaven's vault that fly,

Like paired flamingos, male and mate together,

Like mighty pinnacles that tower on high.

In thousand forms the tumbling clouds embrace,

Though torn by winds, they gather, interlace,

And paint the ample canvas of the sky.

The sky is black as Dhritarāshtra's face;

Proud as the champion of Kuru's race.

The haughty peacock shrills his joy abroad;

The cuckoo, in Yudhishthira's sad case,

Is forced to wander if he would not die;

The swans must leave their forest-homes and fly,

Like Pāndu's sons, to seek an unknown place.

King Shudraka, Little Clay Cart, trans. Arthur William Ryder, 1905.