“Neither supplications nor force nor gold can win her.” And so returned it.
Yet, gallant man as he was, this did not stifle his hope, and knowing that in her garden at Lahore she was building a noble marble pavilion, he entered the garden one day disguising his princeliness under the garment of a mason, carrying his hod on his shoulder, and passed where she stood apart watching her girls who were playing at chausar.
And as he drew near he whispered,
“In my longing for thee I have become as dust wandering round the earth,” and she whose soul was fixed as a lonely star, responded immediately,
“If thou hadst become as the wind yet shouldst thou not touch a tress of my hair.”
So it was always. An embassage was sent from the Shah Abbas of Persia entreating her hand for Mirza Farukh his son, and the Prince came with it, a gallant wooer. She dared not at once refuse the insistence of her father Aurungzib Padshah, and consented that he should come to Delhi that she might judge of his worthiness. And with a glorious retinue resembling a galaxy of stars he came, and she feasted the prince in the pleasure-pavilion in her own garden, and in its marble colonnade with her own fair hand offered him wine and sweetmeats, but veiled in gold gauze, so that not one glimpse had he of the hidden eyes. And exalted with wine and folly he asked for a certain sweetmeat in words which by a laughing play on words signify—a kiss!
This, to the proudest of women! One moment she paused and then haughtily,
“Ask for what you desire from the slaves of our kitchen,” and so went straight to her royal father and told him that though face and jewels were well enough, the man had the soul of a groom under his turban of honour, and she would have none of him. She had her royal way.
Raging with foiled pride and desire he sent her this verse,
“I am determined never to leave this temple.