Verse 13

¹³Then one day, on the southern slopes of Himavat, he saw a city with nine gates, and its marks were plain to see. ¹⁴It had a rampart, gardens, watchtowers and moats, windows and archways, spires of gold and silver and iron, and it was crowded all over with houses. ¹⁵Its terraces and floors were laid with dark stone and crystal and cat's-eye and pearl and emerald and ruby, and it was bright with wealth, like the city of the serpents. ¹⁶It had halls and squares and streets, playgrounds and shrines and shops, sacred trees, flags and banners, and platforms of coral. ¹⁷Outside the city was a garden thick with lovely trees and creepers, its pools loud with the noise of calling birds and swarms of bees;

¹⁸wind came through it wet with the spray of the snow-fed falls and out of the place where the flowers were, and there was a wealth of shaking shoots and boughs along the bank of a lotus pond; ¹⁹and it was untroubled by the many kinds of forest animals, gentle as men under the vow of a sage. There the cuckoos call, and a traveller thinks he is being asked in.