Remembered she but causes pain;
At sight of her my madness grows;
When touched, she makes my senses reel:
How, pray, can such an one be loved?
So towards the end of the Century the poet’s heart begins to turn from the allurements of love. “Cease, maiden,” he exclaims, “to cast thy glances on me: thy trouble is in vain. I am an altered man; youth has gone by and my thoughts are bent on the forest; my infatuation is over, and the whole world I now account but as a wisp of straw.” Thus Bhartṛihari prepares the way for his third collection, the “Century of Renunciation.”
A short but charming treasury of detached erotic verses is the Çṛingāra-tilaka, which tradition attributes to Kālidāsa. In its twenty-three stanzas occur some highly imaginative analogies, worked out with much originality. In one of them, for instance, the poet asks how it comes that a maiden, whose features and limbs resemble various tender flowers, should have a heart of stone. In another he compares his mistress to a hunter—
This maiden like a huntsman is;
Her brow is like the bow he bends;
Her sidelong glances are his darts;
My heart’s the antelope she slays.