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I despaired of seeing her again, I rose and taking up the handkerchief, opened it, whereupon there exhaled from it a scent of musk, which caused me such ease that meseemed I was in Paradise. Then I spread it out before me and there dropped from it a little scroll of paper. I opened the scroll, which was scented with a delicious perfume, and found written therein the following verses:
I sent my love a scroll, complaining of desire Writ in a fine, small hand; for writings vary still.
“Why is thy writing thus,” my lover said to me, “Attenuate and small, uneath to read and ill?”
Quoth I, “Because I too am wasted, ay, and thin. Thus should their writing be, who weary at Love’s will.”
Then, casting my eyes on the beauty of the handkerchief, I saw embroidered on one of its borders the following verses:
The down of his whiskers writes (good luck to it for a scribe!) Two lines, in the basil[1] hand, on the table of his face.
O the wilderment of the moon at him, when he appears! And O the shame of the branch at sight of his flexile grace!
And on the opposite border were the following verses:
The whiskers write upon his cheeks, with ambergris on pearl, Two lines, as ’twere with jet upon an apple, line for line.
Death harbours in his languid eyes and slays with every glance; And in his cheeks is drunkenness, and not in any wine.
When I read what was written on the handkerchief, the flames of love raged in my heart, and longing and trouble redoubled on me. So I took the handkerchief and the scroll and went home, knowing no means to compass my desire, for that I was inexperienced in love affairs and unskilled in the interpretation of the language of signs used therein. The night was far spent before I reached my house, and when I entered, I found my cousin sitting
- ↑ An ornamental hand, said to be so called from the resemblance of the pen with which it is written to the leaf of the sweet basil.
