They bore him away and our union rent ✿ And my vitals with Severance-shaft shot he:
My love, my lowe and my longing to him ✿ Convey, for of parting no cure I see:
I swear an oath by your love that I ✿ Will keep pact and covenant faithfully,
To none I’ll incline or forget your love ✿ How shall love-sick lover forgetful be?
So with you be the peace and my greeting fair ✿ In letters that perfume of musk-pod bear.
Her sister Nasim admired his eloquence of tongue and the goodliness of his speech and the elegance of the verses he sang, and was moved to ruth for him. So she sealed the letter with virgin musk and incensed it with Nadd-scent and ambergris, after which she committed it to a certain of the merchants saying, “Deliver it not to any save to Zayn al-Mawasif or to her handmaid Hubub.” Now when the letter reached her sister, she knew it for Masrur’s dictation and recognised himself in the grace of its expression. So she kissed it and laid it on her eyes, whilst the tears streamed from her lids and she gave not over weeping, till she fainted. As soon as she came to herself, she called for pencase and paper and wrote him the following answer; complaining the while of her desire and love-longing and ecstasy and what was hers to endure of pining for her lover and yearning to him and the passion she had conceived for him.——And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say.
Now when it was the Eight Hundred and Fifty-seventh Night,
She pursued, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that Zayn al-Mawasif wrote the following reply to Masrur’s missive:—“This letter to my lord and master I indite ✿ the king of my heart and my secret sprite ✿ Indeed, wakefulness agitateth me ✿ and melancholy increaseth on me ✿ and I have no patience to endure the absence of thee ✿ O thou who excellest sun and moon in brilliancy ✿ Desire of repose despoileth me ✿ and passion destroyeth me ✿ and how should it be otherwise with me, seeing that I am of the number of the dying? ✿ O glory of the world and Ornament of life, she whose vital spirits are cut off shall her cup be sweet to quaff? ✿ For that she is neither with the quick nor with the dead.” And she improvised these couplets and said:—
Thy writ, O Masrúr, stirred my sprite to pine ✿ For by Allah, all patience and solace I tyne:
When I read thy scripture, my vitals yearned ✿ And watered the herbs of the wold these eyne.