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and be of good cheer, for it shall go hard but I bring thee to thy desire.’ Night cxxxiv.Then she rose and leaving him on coals of fire, returned to the princess, whom she found still pale with rage at Taj el Mulouk’s first letter. The nurse gave her his second letter, whereupon her anger redoubled and she said, ‘Did I not say he would conceive hopes of us?’ ‘What is this dog,’ replied the old woman, ‘that he should conceive hopes of thee?’ Quoth the princess, ‘Go back to him and tell him that, if he write to me again, I will have his head cut off.’ ‘Write this in a letter,’ answered the nurse, ‘and I will take it to him, that his fear may be the greater.’ So she took a scroll and wrote thereon the following verses:
Harkye thou that letst the lessons of the past unheeded lie, Thou that lookst aloft, yet lackest power to win thy goal on high,
Thinkest thou to reach Es Suha,[1] O deluded one, although Even the moon’s too far to come at, shining in the middle sky?
How then dar’st thou hope my favours and aspire to twinned delight And my spear-straight shape and slender in thine arms to girdle sigh?
Leave this purpose, lest mine anger fall on thee some day of wrath, Such as e’en the parting-places shall with white for terror dye.
Then she folded the letter and gave it to the old woman, who took it and returned to Taj el Mulouk. When he saw her, he rose to his feet and exclaimed, ‘May God not bereave me of the blessing of thy coming!’ Quoth she, ‘Take the answer to thy letter.’ He took it and reading it, wept sore and said, ‘Would some one would slay me now, for indeed death were easier to me than this my state!’ Then he took pen and inkhorn and paper and wrote the following verses:
O my hope, have done with rigour; lay disdain and anger by, Visit one who, drowned in passion, doth for love and longing sigh.
Think not, under thine estrangement, that my life I will endure. Lo, my soul, for very severance from thy sight, is like to die.
- ↑ An obscure star in the Great Bear.
