Verse 17

¹¹Then, worn out with hunger and thirst, he turned back and came home; and having bathed and taken fitting food, he lay down, his weariness gone. ¹²He did himself honour with incense and salves and garlands and the rest; and with every limb well adorned, he set his mind on the queen. ¹³Full-fed, glad and very pleased with himself, his mind pulled by Kandarpa, he did not see his fine-hipped wife, the mistress of the house. ¹⁴He asked the women of the inner rooms, seeming low in spirit, you who sit by the altar: Ladies, is it well with you and with your mistress, as it used to be? ¹⁵The riches of a house no longer please a man in his house if there is no mother there, and no wife who holds her husband a god. Who with any sense would sit there like a poor thing, as in a chariot with a limb broken off?

¹⁶Where is that lovely woman who lifts me out when I am sinking in the sea of misery, and lights my understanding at every step? ¹⁷Lord of men, we do not know what your beloved is about. Look, killer of enemies: she is lying on the bare ground with nothing spread under her.