Secret I keep the fire of love which aye for severance burns; ✿ Sworn slave[[406]] to Love who robs my rest and wakes me cruelly:
And ceaseth not my thought to gaze upon your ghost by night, ✿ Which falsing comes and he I love still, still unloveth me.
Would Heaven ye wist the blight that I for you are doomed to bear ✿ For love of you, which tortures me with parting agony!
Then read between the lines I wrote, and mark and learn their sense ✿ For such my tale, and Destiny made me an outcast be:
Learn eke the circumstance of Love and lover’s woe nor deign ✿ Divulge its mysteries to men nor grudge its secrecy.
Then she folded the scroll and giving it to her slave-girl, bade her bear it to Al-Abbas and bring back his reply. So Shafikah took the letter and carried it to the Prince, after the doorkeeper had sought leave of him to admit her. When she came in to him, she found with him five damsels, as they were moons, clad in rich raiment and ornaments; and when he saw her, he said to her, “What is thy need, O hand-maid of good?” Presently she put out her hand to him with the writ, after she had kissed it, and he bade one of his slave-girls receive it from her.[[407]] Then he took it from the girl and breaking the seal, read it and comprehended its contents; whereupon he cried, “Verily, we be Allah’s and unto Him we shall return!” and calling for ink-case and paper, wrote these improvised couplets:—
I wonder seeing how thy love to me ✿ Inclined, while I in heart from love declined:
Eke wast thou wont to say in verseful writ, ✿ “Son of the Road[[408]] no road to me shall find!
How oft kings flocked to me with mighty men ✿ And bales on back of Bukhti[[409]] beast they bind:
And noble steeds of purest blood and all ✿ They bore of choicest boons to me consigned;