महावीरचरितम् (महाकवि भवभूति - वीररस-प्रधान रामकथा नाटक सम्पूर्ण ७ अङ्क सटीक)

23] Act I, Picture-gallery — Translation [—i. 30² its watches speeding unnoticed [in succession]—thus did the night come to an end! 27 Lakshmaṇa—Here is Śūrpaṇakhā ¹ in the Pañchavaṭī.² Sītā—Alas! my noble Lord! No sight of thee hereafter! Rāma—O thou, frightened at [the mere thought of] separation, this is only a picture! Sītā—Be that as it may, a wicked person is [ever] the source of unhappiness. Rāma ³—Why, in sooth, this Janasthāna incident does seem as if [happening in the] present. Lakshmaṇa—Hereafter the demons, through the trick of the disguise [in the form] of the golden deer ⁴—the wicked ones—did in this wise [as represented in the picture] that which [even now] smarts us, though it has been washed off [in the enemy's blood]. In the void of Janasthāna these doings of my noble brother, in his piteous helplessness, they cause even the stone to weep and the heart of adamant to burst! 28 Sītā, with tears, to herself—Alas! Thus, O thou Joy of Raghu's race, [thus] wast thou on my account afflicted! Lakshmaṇa, looking at Rāma, significantly—What is this now, my noble brother? These thy welling (ogha) tears—like some broken threads of a pearl-necklace—trickle down and roll on the ground in streams of shattered drops. Restrained though it is, this emotion, which in its excess swells and fills thy heart, doth [nevertheless], through thy quivering lips and nostrils, become inferable by others. 29 Rāma—Dear brother, Born of that [former] separation from my beloved [that fire of grief]—tormenting as it was—it was, in the hope of vengeance, then endured by me. Now once again that [same] fire of grief, as it flares out in my mind, like a [festering] wound in the vitals of the heart doth it smart me with pain. 30 Sītā—Alas! Alas! I too, in the intensity of my anguish, feel myself as if sundered from my noble Lord!

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¹ Sister of the demon Rāvaṇa. Foiled in her attempt to seduce Rāma and Lakshmaṇa, and being punished by them, it was she who incited Rāvaṇa to abduct Sītā. ² That part of Janasthāna where Rāma lived with his wife and brother. ³ A slight interval during which they pass in review a few more pictures (such as Rāma's fight with the fourteen thousand, cp. ii. 15) must here be presupposed. This renders intelligible Rāma's change of feeling between this speech and his speech immediately preceding. ⁴ This was the trick used to draw Rāma and Lakshmaṇa away from Sītā, whom Rāvaṇa forthwith seized and carried off.