She resumed, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that the young man continued to describe before the Prince of True Believers the young lady’s characteristics, saying:—She was like the full moon on her fourteenth night, a model of grace and symmetry and loveliness. Her speech shamed the tones of the lute, and it was as it were she whom the poet meant in these verses:—
She cried while played in her side Desire, ✿ And Night o’er hung her with blackest blee:—
“O Night shall thy murk bring me ne’er a chum ✿ To tumble and futter this coynte of me?”
And she smote that part with her palm and sighed ✿ Sore sighs and a weeping continued she:—
“As the toothstick beautifies teeth e’en so ✿ Must prickle to coynte as a toothstick be.
O Moslems, is never a stand to your tools, ✿ To assist a woman’s necessity?”
Thereat rose upstanding beneath its clothes ✿ My yard, as crying, “At thee! at thee!”
And I loosed her trouser-string, startling her: ✿ “Who art thou?” and I said, “A reply to thy plea!”
And began to stroke her with wrist-thick yard, ✿ Hurting hinder cheeks by its potency:
And she cried as I rose after courses three ✿ “Suit thy gree the stroke!” and I—“suit thy gree!”