Attractive as the bloom upon the tree,
The glow of youth is spread on all her limbs.
Seizing an opportunity of addressing her, he soon feels that it is impossible for him to return to his capital—
My limbs move forward, while my heart flies back,
Like silken standard borne against the breeze.
In the second act the comic element is introduced with the jester Māṭhavya, who is as much disgusted with his master’s love-lorn condition as with his fondness for the chase. In the third act, the love-sick Çakuntalā is discovered lying on a bed of flowers in an arbour. The king overhears her conversation with her two friends, shows himself, and offers to wed the heroine. An interlude explains how a choleric ascetic, named Durvāsa, enraged at not being greeted by Çakuntalā with due courtesy, owing to her pre-occupied state, had pronounced a curse which should cause her to be entirely forgotten by her lover, who could recognise her only by means of a ring.
The king having meanwhile married Çakuntalā and returned home, the sage Kaṇva has resolved to send her to her husband. The way in which Çakuntalā takes leave of the sacred grove in which she has been brought up, of her flowers, her gazelles, and her friends, is charmingly described in the fourth act. This is the act which contains the most obvious beauties; for here the poet displays to the full the richness of his fancy, his abundant sympathy with Nature, and a profound knowledge of the human heart.
A young Brahman pupil thus describes the dawning of the day on which Çakuntalā is to leave the forest hermitage—
On yonder side the moon, the Lord of Plants,
Sinks down behind the western mountain’s crest;