Sayhun, Jayhun,[[48]] Euphrates-like my tears, ✿ Make flood no deluged rain its like can see:
Mine eyelids chafed with running tears remain, ✿ My heart from fiery sparks is never free;
The hosts of love and longing pressèd me ✿ And made the hosts of patience break and flee.
I’ve risked my life too freely for their love; ✿ And risk of life the least of ills shall be.
Allah ne’er punish eye that saw those charms ✿ Enshrined, and passing full moon’s brillancy!
I found me felled by fair wide-opened eyes, ✿ Which pierced my heart with stringless archery:
And soft, lithe, swaying shape enraptured me ✿ As sway the branches of the willow-tree:
Wi’ them I covet union that I win, ✿ O’er love-pains cark and care, a mastery.
For love of them aye, morn and eve I pine, ✿ And doubt all came to me from evil eyne.
And when his lines were ended he wept, till he swooned away, and abode in his swoon a long while; but as soon as he came to himself, he looked right and left and seeing no one in the desert, he became fearful of the wild beasts; so he clomb to the top of a high mountain, where he heard the voice of a son of Adam speaking within a cave. He listened and lo! they were the accents of a devotee, who had forsworn the world and given himself up to pious works and worship. He knocked thrice at the cavern-door, but the hermit made him no answer, neither came forth to him; wherefore he groaned aloud and recited these couplets:—