So pardon me, my vitals are a writ ✿ Whose superscription are my tears that ran:
Heigh-ho! my cousin seemeth Houri-may ✿ Come down to earth by reason of Rizwán:
'Scapes not the dreadful sword-lunge of her look ✿ Who dares the glancing of those eyne to scan:
O'er Allah's wide-spread world I'll roam and roam, ✿ And from such exile win what bread I can:
Yes, o'er broad earth I'll roam and save my soul, ✿ All but her absence bearing like a man:
With gladsome heart I'll haunt the field of fight, ✿ And meet the bravest Brave in battle-van!
So Kanmakan fared forth from the palace barefoot and he walked in a short-sleeved gown, wearing on his head a skull cap of felt[[74]] seven years old and carrying a scone three days stale, and in the deep glooms of night betook himself to the portal al-Arij of Baghdad. Here he waited for the gate being opened and when it was opened, he was the first to pass through it; and he went out at random and wandered about the wastes night and day. When the dark hours came, his mother sought him but found him not; whereupon the world waxt strait upon her for all that it was great and wide, and she took no delight in aught of weal it supplied. She looked for him a first day and a second day and a third day till ten days were past, but no news of him reached her. Then her breast became contracted and she shrieked and shrilled, saying, "O my son! O my darling! thou hast revived my regrets. Sufficed not what I endured, but thou must depart from my home? After thee I care not for food nor joy in sleep, and naught but tears and mourning are left me. O my son, from what land shall I call thee? And what town hath given thee refuge?" Then her sobs burst out, and she began repeating these couplets:—
Well learnt we, since you left, our grief and sorrow to sustain, ✿ While bows of severance shot their shafts in many a railing rain:
They left me, after girthing on their selles of corduwayne ✿ To fight the very pangs of death while spanned they sandy plain:
Mysterious through the nightly gloom there came the moan of dove; ✿ A ringdove, and replied I, 'Cease thy plaint, how durst complain?'