Classic Poem

In the good, southern land of the Pandya king
where in their spacious houses the wives of farmers
carry the white rice grown in the fields fed by reservoirs
and offer it to fill the basket in which a forest hunter
with fierce dogs presents his heap of venison and to fill the pot
from which a woman of the cowherd caste pours them yogurt,
so that those who came then leave happy, even there,
in your strength, you assaulted the gates in seven walls
and captured them and inscribed them with your great-jawed tiger!
Where you have taken your stand for war is a place of the highest beauty,
from which fiery battles stem! There singers sing the Odes That Praise
Invasions and the camp lanes smoothened with powdered cow dung
are resplendent with armed men! And the families of bards
are nourished with balls of rice and meat like closed
blossoms on garlands strung with fresh, green leaves!
Where you live is even lovelier by far than the festival
you celebrated, sacrificing male goats at every many-storied mansion
near the entrance of the compound with fresh flowers and thick sand,
where it is a pleasure to walk and where there are groves
of cool blossoms, and where no man strolls alone at night,
only pairs of lovers as close and quiet as puppets stilled
in their dance and skillfully fashioned and handsomely painted!