Verse attributed to Kalidasa

[Valerie J Roebuck]

Have you had any replies on this yet?  My reaction on reading it was
that it didn't sound very Indian--unless it's a *very* free
translation.

Valerie J Roebuck
Manchester, UK

At 11:15 am -0500 17/3/04, Donald R. Davis, Jr. wrote:
>Though another scholar asked this question on the RISA list some time ago,
>no response came forth.  I am asking it again here at a student's prompting.
>The student is interested in a Sanskrit version of an English verse usually
>titled "Salutation to the Dawn" and attributed to Kalidasa.
>
>The only information I was able to find is that "Salutation of the Dawn" is
>mentioned in Harvey Cushing's The Life of Sir William Osler (London: Oxford
>University Press; 1940): 1041, indicating the poem was inscribed in a copy
>of Osler's 1913 Silliman Foundation address, with his note indicating he
>didn't know who wrote it. Cushing, in a footnote, comments: "Said to be from
>the Sanskrit, the poem was published, as an inserted frontispiece, in 'Words
>in Pain', Lond., G.M. Bishop, 1919."
>
>One of several versions I have found reads:
>
>Look to this day! For it is life, the very life of life. For yesterday is
>but a dream And tomorrow is only a vision But today well lived makes every
>yesterday a dream of happiness And tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well,
>therefore, to this day! Such is the salutation of the dawn.
>
>Can anyone provide a Sanskrit original for this verse and/or confirm its
>origins in Kalidasa or Sanskrit literature generally?
>
>Thanks for any leads,
>
>Don Davis
>Dept of Asian Languages & Cultures
>University of Michigan