But fear not change from lover true; be true ✿ Unto thy wish, some day thine own ‘twill be.
Love hath forbidden to his votaries ✿ Relinquishment as deadliest heresy.
The eremite, having ended his verse, rose and, coming up to Uns al-Wujud, embraced him,——And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say.
Now when it was the Three Hundred and Seventy-fifth Night,
She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that the eremite, having ended his verse, rose and coming up to Uns al-Wujud embraced him, and they wept together, till the hills rang with their cries and they fell down fainting. When they revived, they swore brotherhood[[51]] in Allah Almighty; after which said Uns al-Wujud, “This very night will I pray to God and seek of Him direction[[52]] anent what thou shouldst do to attain thy desire.” Thus it was with them; but as regards Rose-in-Hood, when they brought her to the mountain and set her in the castle and she beheld its ordering, she wept and exclaimed, “By Allah, thou art a goodly place, save that thou lackest in thee the presence of the beloved!”[[53]] Then seeing birds in the island, she bade her people set snares for them and put all they caught in cages within the castle; and they did so. But she sat at a lattice and bethought her of what had passed, and desire and passion and distraction redoubled upon her, till she burst into tears and repeated these couplets:—
O to whom now, of my desire complaining sore, shall I ✿ Bewail my parting from my fere compellèd thus to fly?
Flames rage within what underlies my ribs, yet hide them I ✿ In deepest secret dreading aye the jealous hostile spy:
I am grown as lean, attenuate as any pick of tooth,[[54]] ✿ By sore estrangement, absence, ardour, ceaseless sob and sigh.
Where is the eye of my beloved to see how I’m become ✿ Like tree stripped bare of leafage left to linger and to die.
They tyrannisèd over me whom they confined in place ✿ Whereto the lover of my heart may never draw him nigh: