By OPPILAMANI-PULAVAR¹

In the oven where blazed the fire the mushroom thrives

And to breasts now parched the gnaw of hunger drives

My babe, whose lips draw not, though briskly plied,

The stream which once the kindly breasts supplied.

He to his mother turns his eyes:

The wife to me her looks doth raise:

So, we to thee have come our ways,

Kumuna!

Rendered from TAMIL by

T. G. Aravamuthan.

In these verses he pictures a poet whom indigence pinched so hard that he pursued king Kumuna in even his exile.