No. 13: "O you who are skilled in cooking! Do not be angry (that the fire fails to burn). The fire does not burn, smokes only, in order to drink in (long) the breath of (your) mouth, perfumed like red pâtela blossoms."
In the use of hyperbole it is very difficult to avoid the step from the sublime to the ridiculous. The author of No. 153 had a happy thought when he sang that his beloved was so perfect a beauty that no one had ever been able to see her whole body because the eye refused to leave whatever part it first alighted on. This pretty notion is turned into unconscious burlesque by the author of No. 274, who complains,
"How can I describe her from whose limbs the eyes that see them cannot tear themselves away, like a weak cow from the mud she is sticking in."
Hardly less grotesque to our Western taste is the favorite boast (No. 211 et passim) that the moon is making vain efforts to shine as brightly as the beloved's face. It is easier for us to sympathize with the Hindoo poets when they express their raptures over the eyes or locks of their beloved:
No. 470: "Other beauties too have in their faces beautiful wide black eyes, with long lashes, but they cannot cast such glances as you do."
No. 77: "I think of her countenance with her locks floating loosely about it as she shook her head when I seized her lip—like unto a lotos flower surrounded by a swarm of (black) bees attracted by its fragrance."
Yet even these two references to personal beauty are not purely esthetic, and in all the others the sensual aspect is more emphasized:
No. 556: "The brown girl's hair, which had succeeded in touching her hips, weeps drops of water, as it were, now that she comes out of the bath, as if from fear of now being tied up again."
No. 128: "As by a miracle, as by a treasure, as in heaven, as a kingdom, as a drink of ambrosia, was I affected when I (first) saw her without any clothing."
No. 473: "For the sake of the dark-eyed girls whose hips and thighs are visible through their wet dresses when they bathe in the afternoon, does Kama [the god of love] wield his bow."