# CXVII: Bewailing the Pangs of Separation and Pining Away explained — The Kural > Chapter companion for The Kural by Thiruvalluvar. ## What happens A lament on the unbearable pangs of separation from a beloved, where grief cannot be concealed yet shame prevents its disclosure, and the night stretches endlessly without solace. ## Themes in this chapter ### Love and Marriage Explores the intense emotional suffering and passion inherent in love and separation. ### The Vanity of Worldly Life Reflects on the futility and pain of worldly attachments, as love brings both joy and deep anguish. ## Character check-ins ### Bouderie The speaker, pining in separation and struggling with concealed grief. ## Key lines > I smother my grief within me, but behold! it only welleth up more and more even as the water of the spring to those who are draining it. Suppressing my sorrow only makes it surge stronger, like water gushing from a spring as it is drawn. _Illustrates the futility of hiding grief._ > To conceal my grief is now beyond me: but as to disclosing it, I should feel it a shame to speak of it even to him that caused it. I can no longer hide my pain, yet I am too ashamed to confess it even to the one who caused it. _Highlights the conflict between concealment and shame._ > At the two ends of the pole which is my life, my two loads of passion and delicacy hang heavy; and this suffering body breaketh under their weight. My life is like a pole bearing the heavy burdens of passion and modesty, and my frail body is crushed beneath them. _Metaphor for the unbearable tension between desire and restraint._ > There is a very sea before me in my passion for my beloved: but a trusty bark to cross it there is none for me. My love is a vast ocean, but I have no reliable boat to navigate it. _Expresses helplessness in the face of overwhelming emotion._ > What will they not do when they are enemies, those who suffer one to pine away when they are friends? If friends allow one to waste away, what worse might enemies do? _Questions the cruelty of those who should offer comfort._ > Vast as the sea is the joy that love yieldeth: but when it taketh to burning, the pangs it causeth are deeper far. Love's joy is as vast as the sea, but its burning pain is even deeper. _Contrasts love's pleasure with its potential for intense suffering._ > I swim in the stormy sea of love, but I spy not any shore thereto: even in the dead of night I am all alone and there is none to console me. I am adrift in love's turbulent sea with no land in sight, utterly alone even in the darkest night. _Emphasizes isolation and despair._ > Night in her mercy rocketh all life to sleep: and yet she hath none to help her through but me. Night mercifully lulls all creatures to rest, yet I alone remain awake to endure her. _Personalizes the night as a companion in sleeplessness._ > The Night that passeth too slowly for me today is crueller in its cruelty than the cruel one himself. This night, dragging on endlessly, is even more merciless than the beloved who caused my pain. _Hyperbolic comparison of time's cruelty to the beloved's._ > If my eyes can run, even as my heart runneth, to where he is, they need not now be swimming in a sea of tears. If my eyes could race to him as my heart does, they would not be drowning in tears. _Wish for the eyes to follow the heart's longing._ ## Links - HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_kural_se/chapters/cxvii-bewailing-the-pangs-of-separation-and-pining-away - Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_kural_se - All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_kural_se/chapters