The Meghaduta or Cloud Messenger is a masterpiece of Sanskrit literature, and was composed by the court poet Kalidasa some time before AD 634 in northern India. A Yaksha or nature deity begs a passing cloud to carry a message across the subcontinent to his grieving consort in the fabled city of Alaká. Under this fiction, Kalidasa presents a sympathetic portrait of northern India, and weaves in the various moods of love traditional in classical Sanskrit poetry.Early translations sacrificed the meaning to the exigencies of English verse. Later translations are close to the prose sense of the Sanskrit, but employ free-verse styles that give no hint of Kalidasa's elevated and harmonious language. The version here by the poet Colin John Holcombe is taken from the standard 1912 Hultzsch text, and employs accomplished English verse to render the simple magnificence of the original while remaining faithful to the meaning.About its author, who wrote five or six other great works, little is known, but he may have served one of the pre-Gupta rulers of northern India at Ujjain.The poem is written in unrhymed stanzas of four lines in the slow-moving Mandakrata measure. Many translations exist, generally in the style of their period, some being designed to help Sanskrit students understand the grammar and vocabulary of Kalidasa's elevated and harmonious language. The work here adopts the 1912 Hultzsch text, and uses five-line stanzas of rhymed pentameters to render the simple magnificence of the poetry while remaining faithful to the prose sense. The few occasions where my intrepretations differ from those of previous translators, or I have been unable to fully encompass the meaning in a particular stanza, are noted in the Appendix, which also contains a short treatment of metrical issues, an introduction to Sanskrit poetry, and a glossary of unfamiliar words and allusions.The translation is for the general reader, and includes a brief treatments of alternative readings, metrical issues, the aims of Sanskrit poetry, and a glossary of unfamiliar words and allusions.A free e-book in pdf format.