Yea, the sun in all his splendour cannot with his brightness vie And the crescent moon’s a fragment that he from his nails doth pare.
——And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.
Now when it was the Eight Hundred and Sixty-eighth Night,
She continued, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that Nur al-Din was delighted with the girl’s verses and he swayed from side to side for drunkenness and fell a-praising her and saying:—
A lutanist to us inclined ✿ And stole our wits bemused with wine:
And said to us her lute, “The Lord ✿ Bade us discourse by voice divine.”
When she heard him thus improvise the girl gazed at him with loving eyes and redoubled in passion and desire for him increased upon her, and indeed she marvelled at his beauty and loveliness, symmetry and grace, so that she could not contain herself, but took the lute in lap again and sang these couplets:—
He blames me for casting on him my sight ✿ And parts fro’ me bearing my life and sprite:
He repels me but kens what my heart endures ✿ As though Allah himself had inspired the wight:
I portrayed his portrait in palm of hand ✿ And cried to mine eyes, “Weep your doleful plight.”