Bhartrihari lived in the fifth century A.D., and wrote in Sanskrit.
Haunts of sensual delight,
the company of women exhausted from making love,
cuckoos murmuring their love-struck sighs,
smiling glances, arbors bowered with vines,
conversations with true poets,
the moon’s delicate light -
these are the flowered garlands that
enchant the hearts of men in spring.
Only learned men, their mouths
filled with false eloquence,
speak so lightly of renunciation.
But that soft-eyed woman there,
her waist garlanded with rubies -
Who can truly forsake her?
Let rank descend to hell and the host
of virtues lower still.
Let morals fall from the mountainside
and nobility be consumed by fire.
Let the thunderbolt shatter courage against the foe.
But let us have money at least,
for without it all these other things are worth
less than blades of grass.
Bind the maddened elephant with a fragile lotus thread,
split the diamond with a flower’s silken edge,
sweeten with a drop of honey the ocean’s salt,
but do not seek with words sprinkled like nectar
to lead bad men to the path of the good.
