रामस्य शोकानुशोकः सूर्यवाय्वोश्च प्रार्थना

This whole sarga is set in long, stately metres, and by the very rhythm the poet conveys the depth of the grief. The prince, bereft of his beloved and tormented by sorrow and confusion, looking like a stricken man and bringing his brother to despair as well, sank once more into still bitterer despair. Seeing Lakṣmaṇa overcome by grief, Rāma, himself plunged in a vast sorrow, sighed hot breaths and, weeping, spoke words fitting his calamity. "I do not think there is another man on this earth who has done such evil as I. Sorrow after sorrow comes to me in an unbroken chain, splitting my heart and my mind." One grief gives birth to another, and that to another still; grief never comes alone. Then he looked for the cause in his own deeds: "In the past I must have done sinful deeds, willingly and more than once, and their fruit has ripened and fallen on me today, so that I pass from one sorrow into the next." And he counted his sorrows: "The loss of the kingdom, parting from my own people, my father's death, separation from my mother: when I dwell on all these, Lakṣmaṇa, they swell the flood of my grief." The poet shows Rāma almost as a philosopher here; he did not blame fate but took his own past deeds as the cause. The order of his list has meaning too, kingdom, kin, father, mother and last his wife, each loss closer to him than the one before.

"When I came to the forest, Lakṣmaṇa, all that pain had quieted in me and become mere hardship; but with Sītā's loss it has flared up again, like a fire suddenly kindled by dry wood." Then his imaginings grew more terrible. "My noble, timid wife must have been carried off by a rākṣasa into the sky, and she, whose voice was always so sweet, must have shrieked again and again, her voice broken with terror." Next he remembered her body part by part, each first in its beauty and then in its ruin, rising from her breasts to her face to her throat. "Those rounded breasts of my beloved, always fit for lovely red sandal paste, must now be smeared with the mire of blood, and still my body does not fall." With those words he condemned himself, that he could imagine all this and not collapse. "Her face, with its soft, clear, gentle voice and its mass of curling hair, in the power of the rākṣasas can shine no more than the moon in Rāhu's mouth. And the throat of my faithful beloved, always fit for a string of pearls, the blood-drinking rākṣasas must have torn open in the empty forest and drunk dry." Blood in place of sandal, a wound in place of a necklace: by this reversal the poet sharpens the grief.

"Without me, in that lonely forest, dragged and hauled about by rākṣasas, she must have cried out piteously like an osprey, her long, lovely eyes streaming." The osprey, in the poets' convention, cries piteously when parted from its mate. Then memory touched a place right in front of him: "On this very slab of rock, Lakṣmaṇa, noble Sītā once sat beside me, smiling sweetly and breaking into laughter, and she talked to you too at length." A single stone carried all their vanished happiness. Then he weighed the possibilities. "This Godāvarī, best of rivers, was always dear to my beloved; I wonder whether she went there, and yet she never went there alone. Lotus-faced, with eyes like lotus petals, she may have gone to gather lotuses; but that is unlikely too, for she never went to the lotus beds without me. She may have gone into this wood of flowering trees full of every kind of bird; but that too is unlikely, for the timid girl was very much afraid to go alone." In each case Rāma was both the one who proposed and the one who refuted, answering every guess from what he knew of Sītā's nature. The poet shows that his reason still worked, but every refutation brought him a step nearer to the truth.

Getting no answer on earth, Rāma turned to the gods. "O Sun, you know what is done and what is left undone in the world; you witness the true and false deeds of all. Where has my beloved gone, and who has carried her off? Tell me everything, for I am struck down with grief." Then he spoke to the Wind: "There is nothing in all the worlds that you do not always know. O Wind, tell me of her who upheld our family: is she dead, or carried off, or somewhere on the road?" Both questions appealed to all-knowing powers, and both went unanswered; having asked trees, deer and river, and now the gods, his despair was growing. Seeing Rāma like this, his body in the grip of grief, senseless and still lamenting, Saumitri, undaunted in spirit and holding to the right course, spoke words suited to the moment: "Put your grief aside now and hold to your resolve; let us search for her with energy. Men of energy never sink in this world, even in the hardest tasks." His advice was wholly practical: give up grief, take up effort. But though Saumitri of lofty courage spoke so, the stricken glory of the Raghu line gave it no thought; letting go of his resolve, he fell back once more into great sorrow. So this sarga too ends in despair, and only in the next will Rāma turn to action.