34. Time is like a reservoir in which the nights are as mud, the days as lotuses, and the clouds as bees. 35. As a covetous man, with worn out broom sticks in hand, sweeps over a mountain to gather the particles of gold strewn over it, so does time with his sweeping course of days and nights, collect in one mass of the dead all living beings in the world. 36. As a miserly man trims and lights a lamp with his own fingers, to look into his stores at each corner of the room; so does time light the lamps of the sun and moon to look into the living beings in every nook and corner of the world. 37. As one ripens the raw fruits in sun and fire in order to devour them, so does time ripen men by their sun and fire worship, to bring them under his jaws at last. 38. The world is a dilapidated cottage and men of parts are rare gems in it. Time hides them in the casket of his belly, as a miser keeps his treasure in a coffer. 39. Good men are like a chaplet of gems, which time puts on his head for a time with fondness, and then tears and tramples it down (under his feet). 40. Strings of days, nights and stars, resembling beads and bracelets of white and black lotuses, are continually turning round the arm of time. 41. Time (as a vulture) looks upon the world as (the carcase of) a ram, with its mountains, seas, sky and earth as its four horns, and the stars as its drops of blood which it drinks day by day. 42. Time destroys youth as the moon shuts the petals of the lotus. It destroys life as the lion kills the elephant: there is nothing however insignificant that time steals not away. 43. Time after sporting for a _Kalpa_ period in the act of killing and crushing of all living beings, comes to lose its own existence and becomes extinct in the eternity of the Spirit of spirits. 44. Time after a short rest and respite reappears as the creator, preserver, destroyer and remembrancer of all. He shows the shapes of all things whether good or bad, keeping his own nature beyond the knowledge of all. Thus doth time expand and preserve and finally dissolve all things by way of sport. CHAPTER XXIV. RAVAGES OF TIME. Ráma rejoined:—Time is a self-willed sportsman as a prince, who is inaccessible to dangers and whose powers are unlimited. 2. This world is as it were a forest and sporting ground of time, wherein the poor deluded worldlings are caught in his snare like a body of wounded stags. 3. The ocean of universal deluge is a pleasure-pond of time, and the submarine fires bursting therein as lotus flowers (serve to beautify that dismal scene). 4. Time makes his breakfast of this vapid and stale earth, flavoured with the milk and curd of the seas of those names. 5. His wife _Chandi_ (Hecate) with her train of _Mátris_ (furies), ranges all about this wide world as a ferocious tigress (with horrid devastation).