“Young man,” said the merchant, breaking somewhat harshly on the singer’s reverie, “was that your own poem?”
“It was, merchant,” replied the poet, “but now, since you have heard it, it is yours also.”
“Tell me,” said the merchant craftily, “how much would you be paid for such a poem in Damascus?”
“If I were lucky,” said the poet, “I might earn a kiss, or if unlucky a dinah.”
“A dinah,” said the merchant. “By the beard of the Prophet, no bad pay for a mouthful of sweet words. And is it difficult to acquire the trick?”
“All that is needed,” answered the poet, “is a rose behind the ear and the moon behind the heart.”
“In Damascus,” cried the merchant, “I have a hanging garden stained with roses, and at night the moon rises in the garden. My ears are longer than yours, and my heart, if one may judge by a comparison of our persons, is incomparably larger. I will accordingly give up the quest of the goose, and will return to Damascus and in my rose garden lay my own golden eggs. But in the meantime,” he added reflectively, stabbing the poet to the heart with the pearl-handled scimitar which he had hitherto concealed, “I may as well dispose of a dangerous rival.”
“O fool,” whispered the dying poet, “it was only the goose who thought the eggs gold, because of the golden goslings hidden in their cool blue shell, as the peasant discovered when he killed her.”
“Why did she think so?” said the merchant, daintily wiping the curved blade.
“Because she was a poet,” whispered the dying man. “And why did she tell the peasant?” asked the merchant, preparing to return to his interrupted rest. “Because,” said the poet, turning over on his side with a little sigh, “because she was a goose.”