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ŚṚNGARAMAÑJARĪKATHA
es, the pleasure-mansions of Laksmi, had their doors opened by the doorkeepers in the guise of the bees who were first within them, by the keys in the form of the rays of the sun; when the drops of dew as cool as the flakes of snow, settling unnoticed, produced dullness in the bees whose wings were heavy due to the pollen of flowers, who were desirous of flying out from the inner parts of the flowers and who were slowly humming as their sleep had just been broken; when the tops of the trees were resonant with the twitterings of the flocks of birds just arisen, with their eyes partially open as the eyelids were heavy with sleep, who frequently fluttered their wings yearning to stretch their limbs cramped in sleep; when gradually opened out fully but slowly according to the regular order of maturity, first the loose outer petals falling out as their joints gave way, then the top opening making visible the drops of honey frozen by the dew, and then becoming manifest the inner cups as the petals opened out, as if for setting into motion the sessions of honey-drinking for the bees; when the clusters of kumudas became dark as if unable to bear the rise even of Mitra (sun), the one eye of the three worlds, and the only one capable of destroying darkness, thus acting according to the virtues of their names and place of origin «born of water, dullness»; when the pleasantfaced wives in the form of directions flashed by a red glow, as if anointed with kunkuma, on coming to know of the arrival of the sun after a long journey; when the she-cakoras with their eyes closed due to the langour of sleep and beaks open resorted to the bejewelled pleasure-balconies moving slowly due to the satiation of drinking of the moonlight throughout the night, after quickly leaving the sky where the gates of darkness were closed by a light as red as heaps of sindūra powder and pushed forward by the wind; when the vision of the family of owls who can see only at night was as if screened by darkness even though there was light, useful in manifesting all things, like that of the wicked people who see only faults; (61) when the pairs of cakravāka-birds quickly came together even from a distance, abandoning their liking for the tanks of lotuses as if it were a play of destiny; when the lustreless lamps were extinguished and removed from the houses, like the yogis who due to detachment turn away from their houses and resort to liberation; when the morning breeze, reddened by the drops of honey mixed with the fallen filaments of the soft opening lotuses, cooled by the contact of the drops of water thrown up by the flutterings of the wings of the female cakravākas' eagerness to be united, and pleased by the humming of the bees awakened by the slow swinging of the flowercreepers of the garden, entered the cavities of the ears of the amorous women tired due to excessive sexual inter-course; when the pundarikas gave the illusion of a cluster of the red lotuses as
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