The saints who give thee every thought,
  Whose every act for thee is wrought,
  Yearn for thine everlasting peace,
  For bliss with thee, that cannot cease.

  Like pearls that grow in ocean’s night,
  Like sunbeams radiantly bright,
  Thy strange and wonder-working ways
  Defeat extravagance of praise.

  If songs that to thy glory tend
  Should weary grow or take an end,
  Our impotence must bear the blame,
  And not thine unexhausted name.

Vishnu is gratified by the praise of the gods, and asks their desire.  They inform him that they are distressed by Ravana, the giant king of Lanka (Ceylon), whom they cannot conquer.  Vishnu promises to aid them by descending to earth in a new avatar, as son of Dasharatha.  Shortly afterwards, an angel appears before King Dasharatha, bringing in a golden bowl a substance which contains the essence of Vishnu.  The king gives it to his three wives, who thereupon conceive and dream wonderful dreams.  Then Queen Kausalya gives birth to Rama; Queen Kaikeyi to Bharata; Queen Sumitra to twins, Lakshmana and Shatrughna.  Heaven and earth rejoice.  The four princes grow up in mutual friendship, yet Rama and Lakshmana are peculiarly drawn to each other, as are Bharata and Shatrughna.  So beautiful and so modest are the four boys that they seem like incarnations of the four things worth living for—­virtue, money, love, and salvation.

Eleventh canto.  The victory over Rama-with-the-axe.—­At the request of the holy hermit Vishvamitra, the two youths Rama and Lakshmana visit his hermitage, to protect it from evil spirits.  The two lads little suspect, on their maiden journey, how much of their lives will be spent in wandering together in the forest.  On the way they are attacked by a giantess, whom Rama kills; the first of many giants who are to fall at his hand.  He is given magic weapons by the hermit, with which he and his brother kill other giants, freeing the hermitage from all annoyance.  The two brothers then travel with the hermit to the city of Mithila, attracted thither by hearing of its king, his wonderful daughter, and his wonderful bow.  The bow was given him by the god Shiva; no man has been able to bend it; and the beautiful princess’s hand is the prize of any man who can perform the feat.  On the way thither, Rama brings to life Ahalya, a woman who in a former age had been changed to stone for unfaithfulness to her austere husband, and had been condemned to remain a stone until trodden by Rama’s foot.  Without further adventure, they reach Mithila, where the hermit presents Rama as a candidate for the bending of the bow.

  The king beheld the boy, with beauty blest
    And famous lineage; he sadly thought
  How hard it was to bend the bow, distressed
    Because his child must be so dearly bought.

  He said:  “O holy one, a mighty deed
    That full-grown elephants with greatest pain
  Could hardly be successful in, we need
    Not ask of elephant-cubs.  It would be vain.