Verse 22

²²Their cheeks lovely with the shine of gold earrings and curls, their glance sweetened with smiling, the cowherd women honoured that best of men and sang his holy deeds, delighted at the touch of his nails. ²³To take their weariness away he went with them, his garland crushed by their bodies and reddened by the saffron on their breasts, followed by ranks of gandharvas, and entered the water, tired, as an elephant king goes in with his cows when the dyke is broken. ²⁴In the water the young women splashed him well and looked at him with love, laughing on this side and that, dear one; and the chariot-riders above rained flowers and praised him, and he played there like a great elephant, though his joy is his own.

²⁵Then he walked in the grove beside the dark river, where the breeze off the flowers of water and of land had reached every quarter, ringed by the bees and the young women, like a rutting elephant among his cows. ²⁶So he whose every wish is true, with that company of women bound to him, spent all those nights bright with the moon's rays, his love-play held within himself, nights that hold the taste of all autumn's poetry and story.