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... stands as the mountains pledged To Bharath's mother boons of old, her choice In her selected time, who now prefers Athwart the coronation's sacred pomp Her just demand; me to the Dundac woods For fourteen years exiled and in my stead Bharath, my brother, royally elect To this wide empire. Therefore I come, to visit And clasp thee once, ere to far woods I go. ... wood and wilderness unknown. *** Canto One 1 The Book of the Wild Forest Then, possessing his soul, Rama entered the great forest, the forest Dundac with difficulty approachable by men and beheld a circle there of hermitages of ascetic men; a refuge for all living things, with ever well-swept courts and strewn with many forms of beasts and... seemed to shake the earth he took Vaidehie up in his arms and moved away and said, "You who wearing the ascetic's cloth and matted locks, 0 ye whose lives are short, yet with a wife have you entered Dundac woods and you bear the arrow, sword and bow, how is this that you being anchorites hold your dwelling with a woman's beauty? Workers of unrighteousness, who are ye, evil men, disgrace to the garb of ...