I love a fawn with gentle white-black eyes, ✿ Whose walk the willow-wand with envy kills:
Forbidding me he bids for rival mine, ✿ Tis Allah’s grace who grants to whom He wills!
And when he heard her chant these lines he ended his recitation of the chapter, and began also to sing and repeated the following couplet:—
My Salám to the Fawn in the garments concealed, ✿ And to roses in gardens of cheek revealed.
The lady rose up when she heard this, and her inclination for him redoubled and she lifted the curtain; and Ala al-Din, seeing her, recited these two couplets:—
She shineth forth, a moon, and bends, a willow-wand, ✿ And breathes out ambergris, and gazes, a gazelle.
Meseems as if grief loved my heart and when from her ✿ Estrangement I abide possession to it fell.[[59]]
Thereupon she came forward, swinging her haunches and gracefully swaying a shape the handiwork of Him whose boons are hidden; and each of them stole one glance of the eyes that cost them a thousand sighs. And when the shafts of the two regards which met rankled in his heart, he repeated these two couplets:—
She ‘spied the moon of Heaven, reminding me ✿ Of nights when met we in the meadows li’en:
True, both saw moons, but sooth to say, it was ✿ Her very eyes I saw, and she my eyne.