When lost my loved one how can’ joy I sleep? ✿ Who shall enjoy such life of low degree?
Thou’rt gone and, desolating house and home, ✿ Hast fouled the fount erst flowed from foulness free:
Thou wast my fame, my grace ’mid folk, my stay; ✿ Mine aid wast thou in all adversity!
Perish the day, when from mine eyes they bore ✿ My friend, till sight I thy return to me!
And she ceased not to weep and wail till the dawn, when the neighbours came in to her and asked her of her son, and she told them what had befallen him with the Persian, assured that she should never, never see him again. Then she went round about the house, weeping, and wending she espied two lines written upon the wall; so she sent for a scholar, who read them to her; and they were these:—
Leyla’s phantom came by night, when drowsiness had overcome me, towards morning while my companions were sleeping in the desert,
But when we awoke to behold the nightly phantom, I saw the air vacant and the place of visitation was distant.[[23]]
When Hasan’s mother heard these lines, she shrieked and said, “Yes, O my son! Indeed, the house is desolate and the visitation-place is distant!” Then the neighbours took leave of her and after they had prayed that she might be vouchsafed patience and speedy reunion with her son went away; but she ceased not to weep all watches of the night and tides of the day and she built amiddlemost the house a tomb whereon she let write Hasan’s name and the date of his loss, and thenceforward she quitted it not, but made a habit of incessantly biding thereby night and day. Such was her case; but touching her son Hasan and the Ajami, this Persian was a Magian, who hated Moslems with exceeding hatred and destroyed all who fell into his power. He was a lewd and filthy villain, a hankerer after alchemy, an astrologer and a hunter of hidden hoards, such an one as he of whom quoth the poet:—
A dog, dog-fathered, by dog-grandsire bred; ✿ No good in dog from dog race issued:
E’en for a gnat no resting-place gives he ✿ Who is composed of seed by all men shed.[[24]]