CHAPTER XXIV. Ravages of Time.
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Valmiki and Mitra, Viharilala
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).
6. 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. 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. The Mahákála 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. The restless bow of death is found flinging its woeful arrows (darts of death) with ceaseless thunder claps on all sides.
10. 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 games.