Hast seen a Citron-copse so weighed adown ✿ Thou fearest bending roll their fruit on mould;
And seemed, when Zephyr passed athwart the tree, ✿ Its branches hung with bells of purest gold?
And shaddocks,[[405]] that among their boughs hung laden as though each were the breast of a gazelle-like maiden, contenting the most longing wight, as saith of them the poet and saith aright:—
And Shaddock mid the garden-paths, on bough ✿ Freshest like fairest damsel met my sight;
And to the blowing of the breeze it bent ✿ Like golden ball to bat of chrysolite.
And the lime sweet of scent, which resembleth a hen’s egg, but its yellowness ornamenteth its ripe fruit, and its fragrance hearteneth him who plucketh it, as saith the poet who singeth it:—
Seest not the Lemon, when it taketh form, ✿ Catch rays of light and all to gaze constrain;
Like egg of pullet which the huckster’s hand ✿ Adorneth dyeing with the saffron-stain?
Moreover in this garden were all manner of other fruits and sweet-scented herbs and plants and fragrant flowers, such as jessamine and henna and water-lilies[[406]] and spikenard[[407]] and roses of every kind and plantain[[408]] and myrtle and so forth; and indeed it was without compare, seeming as it were a piece of Paradise to whoso beheld it. If a sick man entered it, he came forth from it like a raging lion, and tongue availeth not to its description, by reason of that which was therein of wonders and rarities which are not found but in Heaven: and how should it be otherwise when its door-keeper’s name was Rizwan? Though widely different were the stations of those twain! Now when the sons of the merchants had walked about gazing at the garden after taking their pleasure therein, they sat down in one of its pavilions and seated Nur al-Din in their midst.——And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.
Now when it was the Eight Hundred and Sixty-sixth Night,