Look at that Apricot whose bloom contains ✿ Gardens with brightness gladding all men’s eyne:
Like stars the blossoms sparkle when the boughs ✿ Are clad in foliage dight with sheen and shine.
There likewise were plums and cherries and grapes, that the sick of all diseases assain and do away giddiness and yellow choler from the brain; and figs the branches between, vari-coloured red and green, amazing sight and sense, even as saith the poet:—
’Tis as the Figs with clear white skins outthrown ✿ By foliaged trees, athwart whose green they peep,
Were sons of Roum that guard the palace-roof ✿ When shades close in and night-long ward they keep.[[390]]
And saith another and saith well:—
Welcome[[391]] the Fig! To us it comes ✿ Ordered in handsome plates they bring:
Likest a Sufrah[[392]]-cloth we draw ✿ To shape of bag without a ring.
And how well saith a third:—
Give me the Fig sweet-flavoured, beauty-clad, ✿ Whose inner beauties rival outer sheen: