Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 3.djvu/189

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ness of the state), mourning for his son and bewailing him with verses, of which the following are some:

My day of bliss is that whereon thou drawest near to me, And that, whereon thou turn’st away, my day of death and fear.
What though I tremble all the night and go in dread of death, Yet thine embraces are to me than safety far more dear.

And again:

My soul redeem the absent, whose going cast a blight On hearts and did afflict them with anguish and affright!
Let gladness then accomplish its purification-time,^[1] For, by a triple divorcement,^[2] I’ve put away delight.

Meanwhile, the princess Budour abode in the Ebony Islands, whilst the folk would point to her and say, ‘Yonder is King Armanous’s son-in-law;’ and every night she lay with Heyat en Nufous, to whom she made moan of her longing for her husband Kemerezzeman, weeping and describing to her his beauty and grace and yearning to enjoy him, though but in a dream. And bytimes she would repeat these verses:

God knows that, since my severance from thee, full sore I’ve wept, So sore that needs my eyes must run for very tears in debt.
“Have patience,” quoth my censurer, “and thou shalt win them yet,” And I, “O thou that blamest me, whence should I patience get?”

All this time, Kemerezzeman abode with the gardener, weeping and repeating verses night and day, bewailing the seasons of enjoyment and the nights of delight, whilst the gardener comforted him with the assurance that the ship would set sail for the land of the Muslims at the end of the year. One day, he saw the folk crowding together and wondered at this; but the gardener came in to him

1. Alluding, for the sake of metaphor, to the months of purification which, according to the Muslim ceremonial law, must be accomplished by a divorced woman, before she can marry again.
2. A divorce three times pronounced cannot be revoked.