Favour they say’s forbidden to the fair ✿ And shedding lovers’ blood their laws allow;
That naught can love-sicks do but lavish soul, ✿ And stake in love-play life on single throw:[[62]]
I cry in longing ardour for my love: ✿ Lover can only weep and wail Love-lowe.
When the sun rose he opened the door, went forth of the chamber and mounted to the stead where he was before: then he sat down facing the pavilion and awaited the return of the birds till nightfall; but they returned not; wherefore he wept till he fell to the ground in a fainting-fit. When he came to after his swoon, he dragged himself down the stairs to his chamber; and indeed, the darkness was come and straitened upon him was the whole world and he ceased not to weep and wail himself through the livelong night, till the day broke and the sun rained over hill and dale its rays serene. He ate not nor drank nor slept, nor was there any rest for him; but by day he was distracted and by night distressed, with sleeplessness delirious and drunken with melancholy thought and excess of love-longing. And he repeated the verses of the love-distraught poet:—
O thou who shamest sun in morning sheen ✿ The branch confounding, yet with nescience blest;
Would Heaven I wot an Time shall bring return ✿ And quench the fires which flame unmanifest,—
Bring us together in a close embrace, ✿ Thy cheek upon my cheek, thy breast abreast!
Who saith, In Love dwells sweetness? when in Love ✿ Are bitterer days than Aloë’s[[63]] bitterest.
——And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.
Now when it was the Seven Hundred and Eighty-eighth Night,