Count not that I your promises forgot, ✿ Despite the length of your delinquencies:
Be generous, O my lord, to me inclining; ✿ Haply your mouth and cheeks these lips may kiss:
By Allah, ne'er will I relinquish you ✿ Albe you will transgress love's boundaries.
Then Kamar al-Zaman took the seal-ring from the little finger of Queen Budur and set it on his own; then, turning his back to her, went to sleep.[[264]] When Maymunah the Jinniyah saw this, she was glad and said to Dahnash and Kashkash, "Saw ye how my beloved Kamar al-Zaman bore himself chastely towards this young lady? Verily, this was of the perfection of his good gifts; for observe you twain how he looked on her and noted her beauty and loveliness, and yet embraced her not neither kissed her nor put his hand to her, but turned his back and slept." Answered they, "Even so!" Thereupon Maymunah changed herself into a flea and entering into the raiment of Budur, the loved of Dahnash, crept up her calf and came upon her thigh and, reaching a place some four carats[[265]] below her navel, there bit her. Thereupon she opened her eyes and sitting up in bed, saw a youth lying beside her and breathing heavily in his sleep, the loveliest of Almighty Allah's creatures, with eyes that put to shame the fairest Houris of Heaven; and a mouth like Solomon's seal, whose water was sweeter to the taste and more efficacious than a theriack, and lips the colour of coral-stone, and cheeks like the blood-red anemone, even as saith one, describing him in these couplets:—
My mind's withdrawn from Zaynab and Nawár[[266]] ✿ By rosy cheeks that growth of myrtle bear;
I love a fawn, a tunic-vested boy, ✿ And leave the love of bracelet-wearing Fair:
My mate in hall and closet is unlike ✿ Her that I play with, as at home we pair.
Oh thou, who blam'st my flight from Hind and Zaynab, ✿ The cause is clear as dawn uplighting air!
Would'st have me fare[[267]] a slave, the thrall of thrall, ✿ Cribbed, pent, confined behind the bar and wall?
Now when Princess Budur saw him, she was seized by a transport of passion and yearning and love-longing,——And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say.