A beard the meetest racing-ground where gnats and lice contend, ✿ A brow fit only for the ropes thy temples chafe and bite.[[267]]
O thou enravisht by my cheek and beauties of my form, ✿ Why so translate thyself to youth and think I deem it right?
Dyeing disgracefully that white of reverend aged hairs, ✿ And hiding for foul purposes their venerable white!
Thou goest with one beard and comest back with quite another, ✿ Like Punch-and-Judy man who works the Chinese shades by night.[[268]]
And how well saith another:—
Quoth she, “I see thee dye thy hoariness:”[[269]] ✿ “To hide, O ears and eyes! from thee,” quoth I:
She roared with laugh and said, “Right funny this; ✿ Thou art so lying e’en thy hair’s a lie!”
Now when the broker heard her verse he exclaimed, “By Allah thou hast spoken sooth!” The merchant asked what she said: so the broker repeated the verses to him; and he knew that she was in the right while he was wrong and desisted from buying her. Then another came forward and said, “Ask her if she will be mine at the same price;” but, when he did so, she looked at him and seeing that he had but one eye, said, “This man is one-eyed; and it is of such as he that the poet saith:[[270]]—
Consort not with the Cyclops e’en a day; ✿ Beware his falsehood and his mischief fly:
Had this monocular a jot of good, ✿ Allah had ne’er brought blindness to his eye!”