But after this on my Princess came a change hard to be told.
She had despised the Prince alive. For his death she loved him, and with a poet’s passion and tenderness mingled with a woman’s. Her sole relief was in solitude, pouring forth the burning thoughts wherein the phoenix of her soul was consumed in perfumed flame which will forever kindle the heart of man to like ecstasies.
Great Princes sought her, among them Akil Khan, a most beautiful young man, aglow with courage and splendour. He had seen her, dreaming on the roof of her pavilion in the dawn, pensive and lovely, clothed in dawn-colour, her long hair braided with pearls falling about her, and mad with love, he sent her this one line, awaiting completion:
“A vision in crimson appears on the roof of the Palace.”
Kneeling, I implored her to give him some solace,
“For O, Light of my soul,” said I, “the years drift by like leaves, and shall this miracle of beauty and of intelligence clear as diamonds lead its graces to the grave and leave the world no copy? My Princess, my Princess, have pity on your youth! True, the high Prince died a hero for the sake of a lady’s honour, yet remember that until then the soul of him was at home in Devilsville, and not in the rose-gardens of Allah. You have mourned him long enough: awake now to joy.”
But she put it gently aside, saying:
“The soul washed in the lustration of death is pure. What is Shaitanpur to him now? He has forgotten it. And shall I who accepted the sacrifice, forget? O, that I had not failed in courage—that I had died with him! Give me the paper of Akil Khan.”
And considering the line he had written—
“A vision in crimson appears on the roof of the Palace,” she wrote beneath it this line completing the couplet: