MÁTHAVYA.—How can you say so, when I see your Majesty before me at this moment?
KING.—It is very natural that everyone should consider his own friend perfect; but I was alluding to Śakoontalá, the brightest ornament of these hallowed groves.
MÁTHAVYA [aside].—I understand well enough, but I am not going to humor him. [Aloud.] If, as you intimate, she is a hermit's daughter, you cannot lawfully ask her in marriage. You may as well, then, dismiss her from your mind, for any good the mere sight of her can do.
KING.—Think you that a descendant of the mighty Puru could fix his affections on an unlawful object?
Though, as men say, the offspring of the sage,
The maiden to a nymph celestial owes
Her being, and by her mother left on earth,
Was found and nurtured by the holy man
As his own daughter, in this hermitage;—
So, when dissevered from its parent stalk,
Some falling blossom of the jasmine, wafted
Upon the sturdy sunflower, is preserved
By its support from premature decay.
MÁTHAVYA [smiling].—This passion of yours for a rustic maiden, when you have so many gems of women at home in your palace, seems to me very like the fancy of a man who is tired of sweet dates, and longs for sour tamarinds as a variety.
KING.—You have not seen her, or you would not talk in this fashion.
MÁTHAVYA.—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.