LAMENTATION OF THE LOVELORN TRAVELLER. Argument:--The lovesick traveller, relating the woes of his separation to his beloved one. The companions continued:--The traveller having returned home, and finding his beloved one by the arbour of _mandara_ trees, began to relate to her the pangs of his protracted separation. 2. Listen to my marvellous tale, said he, and what happened to me one day, when I sought to send some one to thee with my tidings. 3. I sought long but sought in vain, at the time of my painful separation, to send one to thee at this house of mine; but where such a one be found in the world, who would take a severe interest in the affliction of another, for the sake of charity or mere friendship? 4. Lo, I came to behold even then and there, a big cloud on the top of a mount, resembling the steed of cupid, that appeared jocundly before me, accompanied by the swift lightening as his precursor. 5. I advanced before him and addressed unto him, saying: ah brother cloud, thou bearest the rainbow of Indra, as a collar about thy neck, and are graceful in thy course, have pity on me for a moment. Please go to my dear one and tell her my tidings, with thy low voice, sympathetic tears and breath of sighs; because the tender form of the pliant creeper, will not be able to bear thy loud uproar. 6. I know not, O dark cloud! to what abode to direct thee to find my beloved one, who is pictured in the plate of my heart by the pencil of my mind, and is forever situated in my bosom. 7. But now, O my friendly cloud! my distracted mind has lost that figure of my beloved in my breast, together with the sight of her person from my eyes; and now having lost the freedom of my body in a foreign country, I have become but a wooden framework without my love, which is its living soul: for what living body can bear the pangs of separation. 8. People then thought me dead, and with tears in their eyes, began to prepare my obsequies and collect wood for my funeral. 9. I was borne away to be burnt on a dreadful funeral pile, which was horribly crackling with the cracking wood, of the blazing fire on the burning ground. 10. There, O my lotus eyed love, I was laid on the pile by some persons with their weeping eyes; and the pyre was surrounded by a number of men, who stood as spectators of the horrible sight. 11. At that time the curling smoke of the pyre, began to enter into my nostrils like the creepers or stalks of lotus plants; and as when the dark and lengthy body of the curvilinear snake, enters into a hole in the ground. 12. But <in> all this, I was defended by the strong armour of my firm love to thee; as the unborn or selfborn son of god Brahmá, was defended from the showers of darts, of the whole host of demons and thinking myself to be plunged in the cooling pool of thy love within my heart; I was untouched by the flames of fire burning all about me.