A maiden ’twas, the dresser’s art had decked with cunning sleight;
The sun thou ’d’st say had robbed her cheek and shone with borrowed light.
She came to us apparelled fair in under vest of green,
Like as the ripe pomegranate hides beneath its leafy screen;
And when we asked her what might be the name of what she wore,
She answered in a quaint reply that double meaning bore:
The desert’s heart we penetrate in such apparel dressed,
And Pierce-heart therefore is the name by which we call the vest.
——And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say.
Now when it was the Seven Hundred and Eighty-seventh Night,