Beloved, why this strangeness, why this hate? ✿ When shall thy pardon reunite us two?
Why dost thou turn from me in severance? ✿ Thy face is not the face I am wont to know.
Yes, slanderers falsed my words, and thou to them ✿ Inclining, madest spite and envy grow.
An hast believed their tale, the Heavens forbid ✿ Now thou believe it when dost better trow!
By thy life tell what hath reached thine ear; ✿ Thou know’st what said they and so justice show.
An it be true I spoke the words, my words ✿ Admit interpreting and change allow:
Given that the words of Allah were revealed, ✿ Folk changed the Torah[[335]] and still changing go:
What slanders told they of mankind before! ✿ Jacob heard Joseph blamed by tongue of foe.
Yea, for myself and slanderer and thee ✿ An awful day of reckoning there shall be.
Then she sealed the letter and gave it to me; and I took it and carried it to the house of Jubayr bin Umayr, whom I found absent a-hunting. So I sat down to wait for him; and behold, he returned from the chase; and when I saw him, O Prince of True Believers, come riding up, my wit was confounded by his beauty and grace. As soon as he sighted me sitting at the house-door, he dismounted and coming up to me embraced me and saluted me; and meseemed I embraced the world and all therein. Then he carried me into his house and, seating me on his own couch, called for food. They brought a table of Khalanj-wood of Khorasan with feet of gold, whereon were all manners of meats, fried and roasted and the like. So I seated myself at the table and examining it with care found these couplets engraved upon it:[[336]]——And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say.