"Thy hands and feet are white as snow,
Thy head is whiter still, I trow,
Thy frame with leprous spots o'ergrown,
Disease has marked thee for its own.

"Thy back like spindles in a row
A long unequal curve doth show;
Thy joints are as black knots; I ween,
Thy like before was never seen.

"Whence cam'st thou then, so travel-worn,
Mere skin and bones, a wretch forlorn,
By heat of blazing sun opprest,
By thirst and hunger sore distrest?

"With frame so marred, an awful sight,
Scarce fit to look upon the light,
Thy very mother--no, not she
Would care her wretched son to see.

"What sinful deed was thine, I pray,
Or wrongfully whom didst thou slay?
What the offence I fain would know,
Reduced thee to this state of woe?"

Then the brahmin said:

I'll tell thee, Sir, and tell thee true
E'en as a good man aye should do:
For one that never speaketh lies
Is praised in this world by the wise.

[70] Once in a lonely wood I took my way,
Seeking my kine that late had gone astray;
Through pathless tracts of jungle, fitting home
For the wild elephant, I heedless roam.

Lost in the maze of this vast wilderness,
From thirst and hunger suffering sore distress,
For seven long days I wander thro' the wood
Where the fell tiger rears his savage brood.

E'en rankest poison I was fain to eat
When lo! a lovely tree my gaze doth meet;
O'er a sheer precipice it pendent swung,
And fragrant fruit from all its branches hung.

Whate'er had fallen to the wind's cold touch
I greedily devoured and relished much,
Then, still unsated, I climbed up the tree,
"That way," methought, "lies full satiety."

I ne'er had tasted such ripe fruit before,
And stretching forth my hand to gather more,
The branch, on which my body rested, broke,
As though clean severed by the woodman's stroke.

With broken bough head over heels I went,
With nought to check me in my swift descent
Over the side of rocky precipice,
Without escape from bottomless abyss.

The depth of water in the pool beneath
Saved me from being rudely crushed to death,
So there, poor luckless wight, without a ray
Of hope to cheer me, ten long nights I lay.

At length a monkey came--long-tailed was he
And made his home in some rock cavity
And as he stept from bough to bough, the brute
Did ever pluck and eat the dainty fruit.

But when my thin and pallid form he spied,
Touched with compassion for my woes, he cried,
"Alas! poor wretch, whom I see lying there
Thus overwhelmed with anguish and despair,
If man or goblin, who thou art, declare."