The Nile is my tear-flood of severance, ✿ And here none is forlorn but I alone.
Moreover temperate is her air, and with fragrance blent, which surpasseth aloes-wood in scent; and how should it be otherwise, she being the Mother of the World? And Allah favour him who wrote these lines:—
An I quit Cairo and her pleasaunces, ✿ Where can I wend to find so gladsome ways?
Shall I desert that site, whose grateful scents ✿ Joy every soul and call for loudest praise?
Where every palace, as another Eden, ✿ Carpets and cushions richly wrought displays;
A city wooing sight and sprite to glee, ✿ Where Saint meets Sinner and each 'joys his craze;
Where friend meets friend, by Providence united ✿ In greeny garden and in palmy maze:
People of Cairo, an by Allah's doom ✿ I fare, with you in thoughts I wone always!
Whisper not Cairo in the ear of Zephyr, ✿ Lest for her like of garden scents he reave her.[[577]]
And if your eyes saw her earth, and the adornment thereof with bloom, and the purfling of it with all manner blossoms, and the islands of the Nile and how much is therein of wide-spread and goodly prospect, and if you bent your sight upon the Abyssinian Pond[[578]], your glance would not revert from the scene quit of wonder; for nowhere would you behold the fellow of that lovely view; and, indeed, the two arms of the Nile embrace most luxuriant verdure[[579]], as the white of the eye encompasseth its black or like filagree'd silver surrounding chrysolites. And divinely gifted was the poet who thereanent said these couplets:—