Kural 1158 · இன்னாது இனன்இல்ஊர் வாழ்தல் அதனினும்
Painful it is to live in a town without kin or friends. Even more painful than that is separation from one's dear ones.
The Eighteen Lesser Texts, including the Thirukkural.
Painful it is to live in a town without kin or friends. Even more painful than that is separation from one's dear ones.
Fire burns only when touched. Does fire have the power, as the sickness of love has, to burn even when one keeps away from it?
Many there are who bear the hard thing, remove the sickness of sorrow, endure the parting, and afterwards live on.
I would indeed hide this sickness, but it only swells, like spring water for those who keep drawing it out.
I cannot bear to conceal this sickness, and to tell it to the one who caused it brings me shame.
Desire and shyness hang like two loads at the ends of the kavadi pole of life, within this body that cannot bear them.
There is a sea of desire; but there is no safe raft with which to cross it.
Those who let sorrow come while being friends, what would they do if they were enemies?
The joy that love gives is vast as a sea; but when that same love torments, the sorrow it brings is greater than the sea.
Swimming in the fierce flood of desire, I do not see the shore; even at midnight I alone am awake.