Verse 17

¹⁷Then, when the rite of good fortune had been done for her, she took in her hand a garland of lotuses loud with bees and moved; and she carried a face that shone, fine of cheek, with earrings, and a smile in it that was shy. ¹⁸Her waist was very slender, her two breasts even and close together, wet with sandal and saffron; and as she went this way and that, with the sweet ringing of her anklets, she looked like a creeper of gold. ¹⁹Looking for a standing place for herself that had no fault in it, that would hold, whose good qualities would never fail her, she did not find one among the gandharvas or the perfected or the demons or the yaksas or the wandering singers or the dwellers in the third heaven or the rest.

²⁰Here is austerity, she thought, but no conquest of anger; here knowledge somewhere, and that not free of attachment; here someone great, but with no conquest of desire; and if he is a lord, does he not still lean on something outside himself? ²¹Here dharma somewhere, but no friendship for living things; here a giving up, but not the kind that causes release; there is a man's strength, but not proof against the rush of time; and there is not a second one free of all clinging to the strands. ²²Here long life, but no goodness of character; here that too, but no knowing how long the life will be; and where both are found, that one is inauspicious still. And the one who is wholly auspicious has no wish for me.