ABOUL ASWED AND HIS SQUINTING SLAVE-GIRL.

Aboul Aswed bought a native-born slave-girl, who was squint- eyed, and she pleased him; but his people decried her to him; whereat he wondered and spreading out his hands, recited the following verses:

They run her down to me, and yet no fault in her find I, Except
perhaps it be a speck she hath in either eye.
To compensate this fault, if fault it be, o' the upper parts
She's slim and heavy of the parts beneath the waist that
lie.