“Look on the lute that ’minds of Mangonel; ✿ Whose strings are ropes that make each shot to tell:
And note the pipes that sound with shriek and cry, ✿ The pipes that cast a fearful joyful spell;
Espy the flagons ranged in serried rank ✿ And crops becrowned with wine that longs to well.”
But when Takná had finished her poetry Yusuf and Ibrahim were gladdened and the King bade largesse her with a sumptuous robe and a thousand dinars and she tossed off her cup and passed it to her successor the third handmaiden Mubdi’[[280]] hight. She accepted it and setting it before her took the lute and smote it after manifold fashions and presently she spake these couplets:—
“Love with his painful pine doth rack this frame of me; ✿ Melts heart and maims my vitals cruel agony;
And rail my tears like cloud that rains the largest drops; ✿ And fails my hand to find what seek I fain to see:
Thee I conjure, O Yúsuf, by Him made thee King ✿ O Sahl-son, Oh our dearest prop, our dignity,
This man methinks hath come to part us lovers twain ✿ For in his eyes I see the flame of jealousy.”
And when Mubdi’ had sung her song, Ibrahim the Cup-companion and King Yusuf smiled and rejoiced and anon there befel them what there befel and the two slipt down aswoon;——And Shahrazad was surprised by the dawn of day and fell silent and ceased saying her permitted say. Then quoth her sister Dunyazad, “How sweet is thy story, O sister mine, and how enjoyable and delectable!” Quoth she, “And where is this compared with that I would relate to you on the coming night an the Sovran suffer me to survive?” Now when it was the next night and that was
The Seven Hundred and Third Night,