He ownèd wealth and family and fame ✿ Yet fared from house and home an exile lone:
Live coal beneath his[[80]] ribs he bears for bane, ✿ And mighty longing, mightier ne’er was known:
Passion hath seized him, Passion mastered him; ✿ Yet is he constant while he maketh moan;
His case for Love proclaimed aye that he, ✿ (As prove his tears) is wretched, woe-begone.
When Hasan heard his mother weeping and wailing he wept also and knocked at the door a loud knock. Quoth she, “Who is at the door?”; and quoth he, “Open!” Whereupon she opened the door and knowing him at first sight fell down in a fainting fit; but he ceased not to tend her till she came to herself, when he embraced her and she embraced him and kissed him, whilst his wife looked on mother and son. Then he carried his goods and gear into the house, whilst his mother, for that her heart was comforted and Allah had reunited her with her son versified with these couplets:—
Fortune had ruth upon my plight ✿ Pitied my long long bane and blight;
Gave me what I would liefest sight; ✿ And set me free from all affright.
So pardon I the sin that sin ✿ nèd she in days evanisht quite;
E’en to the sin she sinned when she ✿ Bleached my hair-parting silvern white.
——And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.