Ne’er trust Fazár with an ass, for they
Once roasted ass-pizzle, the rabble rout:
And, when sight they guest, to their dams they say,
“Piss quick on the guest-fire and put it out!”
(Al-Mas’údi vi. 140.)
[432]. i.e. of rare wood, set with rubies.
[433]. i.e. whose absence pained us.
[434]. Mr. Payne and I have long puzzled over these enigmatical and possibly corrupt lines: he wrote to me in 1884, “This is the first piece that has beaten me.” In the couplet above (vol. xii. 230) “Rayháni” may mean “my basil-plant” or “my food” (the latter Koranic), “my compassion,” etc.; and Súsáni is equally ancipitous “My lilies” or “my sleep”: see Bard al-Susan = les douceurs du sommeil in Al-Mas’údi vii. 168.
[435]. The “Niká” or sand hill is the swell of the throat: the Ghaur or lowland is the fall of the waist: the flower is the breast anent which Mr. Payne appropriately quotes the well-known lines of Fletcher:
“Hide, O hide those hills of snow,