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wakeful and called to mind her brother and wept. Presently, she heard Zoulmekan weeping and repeating the following verses:
The southern lightning gleams in the air And rouses in me the old despair,
The grief for a dear one, loved and lost, Who filled me the cup of joy whilere.
It minds me of her who fled away And left me friendless and sick and bare.
O soft-shining lightnings, tell me true, Are the days of happiness past fore’er?
Chide not, O blamer of me, for God Hath cursed me with two things hard to bear,
A friend who left me to pine alone, And a fortune whose smile was but a snare.
The sweet of my life was gone for aye, When fortune against me did declare;
She brimmed me a cup of grief unmixed, And I must drink it and never spare.
Or ever our meeting ’tide, sweetheart, Methinks I shall die of sheer despair,
I prithee, fortune, bring back the days When we were a happy childish pair;
The days, when we from the shafts of fate, That since have pierced us, in safety were!
Ah, who shall succour the exiled wretch, Who passes the night in dread and care,
And the day in mourning for her whose name, Delight of the Age,[1] bespoke her fair?
The hands of the baseborn sons of shame Have doomed us the wede of woe to wear.
Then he cried out and fell down in a swoon, and when Nuzhet ez Zeman heard his voice in the night, her heart was solaced and she rose and called the chief eunuch, who said to her, “What is thy will?” Quoth she, “Go and fetch me him who recited verses but now.” Night lxxii.“I did not hear him,” replied he; “the people are all asleep.” And she said, “Whomsoever thou findest awake, he is the man.” So he went out and sought, but found none awake but the stoker; for Zoulmekan was still insensible, and
- ↑ Nuzhet ez Zeman.
