The Kural or the Maxims of Tiruvalluvar/Chapter 117
CHAPTER 117
BEWAILING THE PANGS OF SEPARATION AND PINING AWAY
SHE
1161. I smother my grief within me, but behold ! it only welleth up more and more even as the water of the spring to those who are draining it.
1162. To conceal my grief is now beyond me : but as to disclosing it, I should feel it a shame to speak of it even to him that caused it.
1163. At the two ends of the pole which is my life, my two loads of passion and and delicacy hang heavy; and this suffering body breaketh under their weight.[1]
1164. There is a very sea before me in my passion for my beloved: but a trusty bark to cross it there is none for me.
1165. What will they not do when they are enemies, those who suffer one to pine away when they are friends ?
1166. Vast as the sea is the joy that love yieldeth: but when it taketh to burning, the pangs it causeth are deeper far.
1167. I swim in the stormy sea of love, but I spy not any shore thereto : even in the dead of night I am all alone and there is none to console me.
1168. Night in her mercy rocketh all life to sleep : and yet she hath none to help her through but me.[2]
1169. The Night that passeth too slowly for me to-day is crueller in its cruelty than the cruel one himself.
1170. If my eyes can run, even as my heart runneth, to where he is, they need not now be swimming in a sea of tears.
- ↑ Whenever men have a heavy burden to carry, they divide it into two equal bundles and attach each one of them to one end of a longish pole which is then lifted and carried on the shoulder by the middle.
- ↑ All else but me are asleep: by being awake I bear Night company and help her to go on with her work.