Mahadeva, Lord of the Earth,
 comes down for the sixth time
 to live as one of us,
 and to feel joy and pain like us.
 He decided to live here
 and to experience what might happen;
 for if he must decide whether to punish or forgive,
 he must see humankind as a human.
 He has observed the city as a wanderer,
 following the great, paying attention to the humble,
 and leaving them in the evening to go onward.
 
 Having now departed
 to where the last houses stand,
 he sees a pretty, forlorn girl
 with painted cheeks:
 "I greet you, young lady!" - "Thank you for the honour! 
 Wait, I'm coming out." -
 "And who are you?" - "A dancing-girl,
 and this is the House of Love."
 She begins to dance and strike on her cymbals;
 she dances in a circle she knows is so charming,
 moving sinuously and reaching out flowers to him.
 
 She draws him caressingly toward the threshhold,
 enticing him with animation into the house.
 "Fair youth, soon the hut
 will be bright with lamplight.
 If you are tired, I will refresh you
 and soothe the pain in your feet.
 Whatever you wish you shall have:
 rest, joy or jesting."
 She busily soothes his feigned afflictions.
 The god smiles; he rejoices to see
 a human heart through the depths of her debasement.
 
 And he exacts the servitude of a slave from her,
 but she only becomes more cheerful;
 so the maiden's arts, learned early,
 have become natural after so long.
 So are blossoms replaced
 soon by fruit;
 if there is submission in the mind,
 love will not be far away.
 But to test her more and more stridently,
 the Judge opts for the heights and depths of
 both pleasure and horror and grim pain.
 
 And he kisses her colorful cheeks,
 and she feels the hearteache of love,
 and the maiden stands trapped,
 and weeps for the first time:
 she sinks down at his feet,
 after neither pleasure nor gain;
 ah! her pliant limbs
 refuse to work any longer.
 And so, for a pleasant celebration of the bed
 they prepare a dark, comfortable veil
 for the night hours: a lovely web.
 
 Falling asleep late amid much play,
 and awakening early after a brief rest,
 she finds lying at her bosom
 the well-beloved guest is dead.
 She starts with a scream and falls upon him,
 but she cannot awaken him;
 and his rigid form is carried away
 soon to the funeral pyre.
 She hears the priests and the dirges,
 and she hurtles at the crowd.
 "Who are you? Why do you intrude on this funeral?"
 
 She falls by the bier,
 her cries cutting through the air:
 "I want my husband again!
 I seek for him in the crypt;
 shall these limbs of such divine splendour
 fall into ash before my very eyes?
 Mine! He was mine! I came before everyone else!
 Ah, only one sweet night!"
 The priests chant: "We bear away the aged,
 after long fatigue and illness;
 we bear away the young before they realize it.
 
 "Hear the lessons of your priests:
 this was not your husband.
 You live only as a dancing-girl,
 so you have no duty toward him.
 Only the corpse's shadow follows it
 into the Realm of the Dead;
 only the wife follows the husband;
 it is both her duty and her glory.
 Resound, trumpet, in a holy lament!
 Gods, receive this ornament of the Day,
 o receive this youth in flames!"
 
 Thus the choir, their song intensifying
 her heart's anguish with their lack of pity;
 and with outstretched arms
 she springs into hot death.
 But the God-Youth rises
 from the flames
 and sweeps into his arms
 his beloved.
 The Divinity rejoices to find a penitent sinner;
 lost children are given immortality
 and lifted with arms of fire to Heaven.