Now when it was the Eight Hundred and Eighty-eighth Night,
She continued, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that the Wazir’s daughter said to herself, “An his beloved be fair as he, it behoveth him to pour forth tears; and, if other than fair, his heart is wasted in vain regrets!” Now Miriam the Girdle-girl, the Minister’s consort, had removed to the new palace the day before and the Wazir’s daughter knew that she was straitened of breast; so she was minded to seek her and talk with her and tell her the tidings of the young man and the rhymes and verses she had heard him recite; but, before she could carry out her design the Princess sent for her to cheer her with her converse. So she went to her and found her heavy at heart and her tears hurrying down her cheeks; and whilst she was weeping with sore weeping she recited these couplets:
My life is gone but love-longings remain ✿ And my breast is straitened with pine and pain:
And my heart for parting to melt is fain ✿ Yet hoping that union will come again,
And join us in one who now are twain.
Stint your blame to him who in heart’s your thrall ✿ With the wasted frame which his sorrows gall,
Nor with aim of arrow his heart appal ✿ For parted lover is saddest of all,
And Love’s cup of bitters is sweet to drain!
Quoth the Wazir’s daughter to her, “What aileth thee, O Princess, to be thus straitened in breast and sorrowful of thought?” Whereupon Miriam recalled the greatness of the delights that were past and recited these two couplets:—
I will bear in patience estrangement of friend ✿ And on cheeks rail tears that like torrents wend: