MÁ[T.]HAVYA.
I can quite understand it must require something surpassingly attractive to excite the admiration of such a great man as you.
KING.
I will describe her, my dear friend, in a few words,
Man's all-wise Maker, wishing to create
A faultless form, whose matchless symmetry
Should far transcend Creation's choicest works,
Did call together by his mighty will,
And garner up in his eternal mind,
A bright assemblage of all lovely things;
And then, as in a picture, fashion them
Into one perfect and ideal form—
Such the divine, the wondrous prototype,
Whence her fair shape was moulded into being.
MÁ[T.]HAVYA.
If that's the case, she must indeed throw all other beauties into the shade.
KING.
To my mind she really does.
This peerless maid is like a fragrant flower,
Whose perfumed breath has never been diffused;
A tender bud, that no profaning hand
Has dared to sever from its parent stalk;
A gem of priceless water, just released
Pure and unblemished from its glittering bed.
Or may the maiden haply be compared
To sweetest honey, that no mortal lip
Has sipped; or, rather, to the mellowed fruit
Of virtuous actions in some former birth[37],
Now brought to full perfection? Lives the man
Whom bounteous heaven has destined to espouse her?