I ask of you from every rising sun, ✿ And eke I ask when flasheth leven-light:

Restless I pass my nights in passion-pain, ✿ Yet ne'er I 'plain me of my painful plight:

My love! if longer last this parting throe ✿ Little by little shall it waste my sprite.

An thou wouldst bless these eyne with sight of thee ✿ One day on earth, I crave none other sight:

Think not another could possess my mind ✿ Nor length nor breadth for other love I find.

Then he walked on till he came to the apartment of his brother's widow, the mother of Badr al-Din Hasan, the Egyptian. Now from the time of her son's disappearance she had never ceased weeping and wailing through the light hours and the dark; and, when the years grew longsome with her, she built for him a tomb of marble in the midst of the saloon and there used to weep for him day and night, never sleeping save thereby. When the Wazir drew near her apartment, he heard her voice and stood behind the door while she addressed the sepulchre in verse and said:—

Answer, by Allah! Sepulchre, are all his beauties gone? ✿ Hath change the power to blight his charms, that Beauty's paragon?

Thou art not earth, O Sepulchre! nor art thou sky to me; ✿ How comes it, then, in thee I see conjoint the branch and moon?

While she was bemoaning herself after this fashion, behold, the Wazir went in to her and saluted her and informed her that he was her husband's brother; and, telling her all that had passed between them, laid open before her the whole story, how her son Badr al-Din Hasan had spent a whole night with his daughter full ten years ago but had disappeared in the morning. And he ended with saying, "My daughter conceived by thy son and bare a male child who is now with me, and he is thy son and thy son's son by my daughter." When she heard the tidings that her boy, Badr al-Din, was still alive and saw her brother-in-law, she rose up to him and threw herself at his feet and kissed them, reciting these lines:—

Allah be good to him that gives glad tidings of thy steps; ✿ In very sooth for better news mine ears would never sue: