Take with thee this my form where’er thou goest,
And when thou’rt dead let me be laid near thee!
Call on me in my tomb, my bones shall answer
And sigh responses to a call from thee!
If it were asked, “What wouldst thou Heaven should order?”
“His will,” I answer, “First, and then what pleases thee.”
As Nur al-Din was in this case, weeping and crying out, “O Miriam! O Miriam!” behold, an old man landed from a vessel and coming up to him, saw him shedding tears and heard him reciting these verses:—
O Maryam of beauty[[506]] return, for these eyne ✿ Are as densest clouds railing drops in line:
Ask amid mankind and my railers shall say ✿ That mine eyelids are drowning these eyeballs of mine.
Said the old man, “O my son, meseems thou weepest for the damsel who sailed yesterday with the Frank?” When Nur al-Din heard these words of the Shaykh he fell down in a swoon and lay for a long while without life; then, coming to himself, he wept with sore weeping and improvised these couplets:—