Chapter XXIV - Ravages of time

Rama rejoined:—

1. [Sanskrit available]
Time is a self-willed sportsman as a prince, who is inaccessible to dangers and whose powers are unlimited.

2. [Sanskrit available]
This world is as it were a forest and sporting ground of time, wherein the poor deluded worldlings are caught in his snare like bodies of wounded stags.

3. [Sanskrit available]
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. [Sanskrit available]
Time makes his breakfast of this vapid and stale earth, flavoured with the milk and curd of the seas of those names.

5. [Sanskrit available]
His wife Chandi (Hecate) with her train of Matris (furies), ranges all about this wide world as a ferocious tigress (with horrid devastation).

6. [Sanskrit available]
The earth with her waters is like a bowl of wine in the hand of time, dressed and flavoured with all sorts of lilies and lotuses.

7. [Sanskrit available]
The lion with his huge body and startling mane, his loud roaring and tremendous groans, seems as a caged bird of sport in the hand of time.

8. [Sanskrit available]
The Mahakala like a playful young Kokila (cuckoo), appears in the figure of the blue autumnal sky, and warbling as sweet as the notes of a lute of gourd (in the music of the spheres).

9. [Sanskrit available]
The restless bow of death is found flinging its woeful arrows (darts of death) with ceaseless thunder claps on all sides.

10. [Sanskrit available]
This world is like a forest, wherein sorrows are ranging about as playful apes, and time like a sportive prince in this forest, is now roving, now walking, now playing and now killing his game.