Classic Poem

In this world massed together of earth that the wind
cannot penetrate, dressed in sky and surrounded
by the broad, vast sea, of the three who rule over
the cool land of the Tamils, those whose imperial drums
resound, it is your royalty that is truly royalty,
O greatness! And where the sugarcane with its swaying nodes
shows dancing white flowers that look like gathered spears
because of the flow of the cool and lovely Kaviri that breaks
into canals to feed the soil even if the sun's bright rays
should fill the four directions or the shining rays of the Silver Planet
turn to the south, it is your country that is truly a country!
You are a king resplendent with the might of a country
so wealthy! Therefore hear me out as I speak of things
that concern you! When people wish for justice, fairly administered
as if Righteousness itself were the judge, then they find you
easily approachable, and asking only for drops of rain,
they receive showers! Is your broad umbrella, which rivals
the sky itself and in glowing blinds the eyes, a shield
against the sun as if it were a thick cloud in the midst of the vaulted
heavens blocking off the sun above? No! O Valavan
with your sharp spear! It is a shield for the suffering people!
On the broad field of battle where divisions of elephants
struggle and then lie scattered here and there like chunks
of the hollow palmyra tree, when your armies in combat
withstand oncoming forces, then rail at their retreating backs,
even the victories accomplished stem from what grows in the furrow
pierced by the weapon of the plow! If the rains should fail,
if the harvests lessen, if in the work of men things happen
that go against nature, this vast world blames its kings!
If you really understand this, if you will not attend
to people who with no foundation at all spew slanders,
if you will protect those weighed down with dependents, those
who care for the oxen that plow, if you will protect
the castes, even your enemies then will praise your feet!