Verse 19
Dharma guesses at her grief· Verses 19–24
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19Are you free of illness in yourself, good lady? Your lustre is gone, and you are faded a little about the face. I see in you some inward pain, mother: do you grieve for a kinsman far off? 20Do you grieve for me, who am short of my feet and have only one; or for yourself, about to be enjoyed by the low? Or for the gods and the rest, whose share of sacrifice has been taken; or for the people, when the bountiful one does not rain? 21Do you grieve, earth, for women left unguarded and for children in distress as though among man-eaters; and for the goddess of speech in a brahmana line given to evil deeds, and for the foremost of lines in a royal house that is no friend to Brahman?
22Or for the kshatriyas in name only, overtaken by Kali, or the realms cast down by them; or for the world of the living, its face set here and there upon eating and drinking and clothing and bathing and coupling? 23Or is it, mother earth, that you are left behind, remembering the deeds of Hari, who took his descent to take down your great burden and has now vanished: deeds that make release itself wait? 24Tell me this, bearer of wealth: the root of your pain, by which you have been so worn thin. Or has time, stronger than the strong, carried off, mother, that good fortune of yours which the gods honoured?