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Who moved thee, fairest one, to use this rigour of disdain And slay, with stress of love, the souls that sigh for thee in vain?
If thou recall me not to mind beyond our parting-day, God knows the thought of thee with me for ever shall remain!
Thou smitest me with cruel words, that yet are sweet to me: Wilt thou one day, though but in dreams, to look upon me deign?
I had not thought the ways of Love were languishment and woe And stress of soul until, alas! to love thee I was fain.
I knew not weariness till I the captive of thine eyes Became and all my soul was bound in passion’s fatal chain.
Even my foes have ruth on me and pity my distress: But thou, O heart of steel, wilt ne’er have mercy on my pain.
By God, although I die, I’ll ne’er forget thee, O my hope, Nor comfort take, though life itself for love should waste and wane!
When I read these verses, I wept sore and buffeted my face; then I unfolded the scroll, and there fell from it another. I opened it and found these words written therein: “Know, O my cousin, that I acquit thee of my blood and I beseech God to make accord between thee and her whom thou lovest: but if aught befall thee through the daughter of Delileh the crafty, return thou not to her neither resort to any other woman and bear thine affliction patiently, for were not the ordained term of thy life a long one, thou hadst perished long ago: but praised be God, who hath appointed my last day before thine! My peace be upon thee; preserve the cloth with the gazelles figured thereon and let it not leave thee, for it used to keep me company, whenas thou wert absent from me; Night cxxviii.but I conjure thee, by Allah, if thou chance to fall in with her who wrought these gazelles and it be in thy power to foregather with her, hold aloof from her and do not let her approach thee nor marry her; and if thou happen not on her and find no way to her, look thou company not with any other of her sex. Know that she who wrought these gazelles is the daughter of the King of the Camphor Islands and every year she works a like cloth and despatches it to far countries, that her report and the beauty of her broidery,
