Now when it was the Two Hundred and Twenty-ninth Night,
She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that As'ad called to mind his brother and the honours he erst enjoyed; so he wept and groaned and complained and poured forth tears in floods and improvised these couplets:—
Easy, O Fate! how long this wrong, this injury, ✿ Robbing each morn and eve my brotherhood fro' me?
Is't not time now thou deem this length sufficiency ✿ Of woes and, O thou Heart of Rock, show clemency?
My friends thou wrongedst when thou madst each enemy ✿ Mock and exult me for thy wrongs, thy tyranny:
My foeman's heart is solaced by the things he saw ✿ In me, of strangerhood and lonely misery:
Suffice thee not what came upon my head of dole, ✿ Friends lost for evermore, eyes wan and pale of blee?
But must in prison cast so narrow there is naught ✿ Save hand to bite, with bitten hand for company;
And tears that tempest down like goodly gift of cloud, ✿ And longing thirst whose fires weet no satiety.
Regretful yearnings, singulfs and unceasing sighs, ✿ Repine, remembrance and pain's very ecstacy: