New shape assumes, the symptoms serious grow,
  The healer himself breaks at last the news
  Unto the anxious mother, who stands mute,
  And knows not what to do in blank despair—­
  So felt the hapless Chandra when these words
  The treach’rous Bukka spake and left the scene. 
  Now ’twas her holy Brahmin priest appeared,
  And counsel gave again in words like these: 
  “Grieve not, but well rejoice that Bukka builds
  His future hope on base dishonesty. 
  His fall is near, and Timma’s safe return
  Henceforth is sure, for he that hopes to win
  By treach’ry and deceit, fails sorely in
  This world of God, and therefore fear him not;
  It is the foe magnan’mous thou shouldst fear. 
  Our holy ancient writings say it is
  No sin deceit to conquer by deceit;
  And hence fail not to send immediate word
  That Bukka should to-morrow eve expect
  Thee as befits a woman of thy rank,
  And with a hundred maidens in his tent. 
  Take twenty litters, and let one appear
  More gorgeous than the rest, for thee to sit,
  Take but a hundred of thy faithful men,
  All armed to fight for their dear king and queen. 
  Thou art a kshatriya girl, thou knowest well
  To fight, and therefore take thy fav’rite bow
  And arrows and conceal thy person with
  A maiden’s veil, armed fully as thou art,
  And likewise let thy men be covered too,
  To look like thine own maids of honour, let
  Each litter, with a man inside, be borne
  By four, go forth equipped likewise, surprise
  The foe, bring him a prisoner, or upon
  The field of battle die a noble death. 
  And death need have no horrors unto thee,
  But unto those to whom this world is bright,
  Its prospects hopeful and its pleasures keen,
  And to the healthy and the young death’s pangs
  Are most severe when life is plucked, and from
  Sere age, when all is ready for the end,
  Life unperceived goes as from one that sleeps. 
  The gentlest wind brings down the serest leaf. 
  To sever from the parent stem by force
  The freshest must be plucked, and so with man. 
  And by the righteous and the just, when sore
  Oppressed with grief, dear death is welcomed most. 
  When the eruptions on the skin pain most,
  By cutting them relief at once is sought;
  E’en so, if noble Timmaraj is killed,
  Court instant death, thy dagger hurl, and bare
  Thy breast and lifeless by thy husband fall,
  Like that same bird that, full up to the throat,
  Swallows the little pebbles of the sand,
  And, soaring high aloft upon her wings,
  Suddenly closes them and drops down dead
  Near her dead lover, where the body bursts. 
  But this, if you find hard, run with thy life
  To this our safe abode, where willingly
  The fun’ral pyre we, with our hands, will raise
  And feed the flames thy body to consume.