[FN#255] Again old experience, which has learned at a heavy cost how many a goodly apple is rotten at the core.
[FN#256] This couplet has occurred in Night xxi. I give Torrens (p. 206) by way of specimen.
[FN#257] Arab. "Zбka" = merely tasting a thing which may be sweet with a bitter after-flavour
[FN#258] This tetraseich was in Night xxx. with a difference.
[FN#259] The lines have occurred in Night xxx. I quote Torrens, p. 311.
[FN#260] This tetrastich is in Night clxix. I borrow from Lane (ii. 62).
[FN#261] The rude but effective refrigerator of the desert Arab who hangs his water-skin to the branch of a tree and allows it to swing in the wind.
[FN#262] Arab "Khumбsiyah" which Lane (ii. 438) renders "of quinary stature." Usually it means five spans, but here five feet, showing that the girl was young and still growing. The invoice with a slave always notes her height in spans measured from ankle-bone to ear and above seven she loses value as being full grown. Hence Sudбsi (fem. Sudбsiyah) is a slave six spans high, the Shibr or full span (9 inches) not the Fitr or short span from thumb to index. Faut is the interval-between every finger, Ratab between index and medius, and Atab between medius and annularis.
[FN#263] "Moon faced" now sounds sufficiently absurd to us, but it was not always so. Solomon (Cant. vi. 10) does not disdain the image "fair as the moon, clear as the sun," and those who have seen a moon in the sky of Arabia will thoroughly appreciate it. We find it amongst the Hindus, the Persians, the Afghans, the Turks and all the nations of Europe. We have, finally, the grand example of Spenser,
"Her spacious forehead, like the clearest moon, etc."