This is she I will never forget till I die ✿ Nor draw near but to those who to her draw nigh.
A being for semblance like Moon at full ✿ Praise her Maker, her Modeller glorify!
Tho’ be sore my sin seeking love-liesse, ✿ On esperance-day ne’er repent can I;
A couplet reciting which none can know ✿ Save the youth who in couplets and rhymes shall cry,
“None weeteth love but who bears its load ✿ Nor passion, save pleasures and pains he aby.”
So Nur al-Din lay with the damsel through the night in solace and delight,——And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say.
Now when it was the Eight Hundred and Seventy-fifth Night,
She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that Nur al-Din lay with that damsel through the night in solace and delight, the twain garbed in the closely buttoned garments of embrace, safe and secure against the misways of nights and days, and they passed the dark hours after the goodliest fashion, fearing naught, in their joys love-fraught, from excess of talk and prate. As saith of them the right excellent poet[[482]]:—
Go, visit her thou lovest, and regard not
The words detractors utter; envious churls