For Daksha's daughter, Shiva's wife, the Lord
Of Being, in her angry will who left
Her body soulless in her father's hall,
Sought in their mountain home a happier birth,
And by her in a trance profound of joy
Conceived was born of great Himaloy's seed.
~~~
Parvati was she called, the mountain's child,
When love to love cried answer in her house
And to that sound she turned her lovely face,
But after-days the great maternal name
Of Uma gave.
~~~
Among her fair companions of delight
She built frail walls of heavenly Ganges' sands
Or ran to seize the tossing ball or pleased
With puppet children her maternal mind,
Absorbed in play, the mother of the worlds.
And easily too to her as if in play
All sciences and wisdoms crowding came
Out of her former life, like swans that haste
In autumn to a sacred river's shores;
They started from her mind as grow at night
Born from some luminous herb its glimmering rays.
Selected verses from Sri Aurobindo's Blank Verse rendering of Kalidasa's ''The Birth of the War-God''