THE RÁMÁYAN OF VÁLMÍKI, VOL. III - Gujarat Knowledge Centre

120 TEE RA:MA:7AN. Book III.
' Now
Dushan and his armfed train •
Lie prostrate on the battle plain.
Lead forth an army mightier still,
Rama, this wretched man, to kill.
Fight ye with darts of every shape,
Nor let him from your wrath escape.'
Thus spoke the fiend, by rage impelled.
And straight his course toward R^ma held.
With Syenftgami and the rest
Of his twelve chiefs he onward pressed,
And every giant as he went
A storm of well-wrought arrows sent.
Then with his pointed shafts that came
With gold and diamond bright as flame.
Dead to the earth the hero threw
The remnant of the demon crew.
Those shafts with feathers bright as gold,
Like flames which wreaths of smoke enfold.
Smote down the fiends like tall trees rent
By red bolts from the firmament,
A hundred shafts he pointed well :
By their keen barbs a hundred fell
A thousand,—and a thousand more
In battle's front lay drenched in gore.
Of all defiance and guard bereft.
With sundered bows and harness cleft.
Their bodies red with bloody stain
Fell the night-rovers on the plain,
Which, covered with the loosened hair
Of bleedipg giants prostrate there.
Like some great .altar showed, arrayed
For hply rites with grass b'erlaid.
The darksome wood, each glade and dell
Where the wild demons fought and fell,