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cruel and disdainful; from the despairing lover to prince Asaad, lord of surpassing beauty and excelling grace, of the moon-bright face and the flower-white brow and dazzling splendour. This is my letter to him whose love consumes my body and rends my skin and my bones. Know that my patience fails me and I am at a loss what to do: longing and wakefulness weary me and sleep and patience deny themselves to me; but mourning and watching stick fast to me and desire and passion torment me, and the extremes of languor and sickness. Yet may my life be thy ransom, though it be thy pleasure to slay her who loveth thee, and may God prolong thy life and preserve thee from every ill!’ After this, she wrote the following verses:
Fate hath so ordered it that I must needs thy lover be, O thou whose charms shine as the moon, when at the full is she!
All beauty and all eloquence thou dost in thee contain And over all the world of men thou’rt bright and brave to see.
That thou my torturer shouldst be, I am indeed content, So but thou wilt one glance bestow, as almous-deed, on me.
Happy, thrice happy is her lot who dieth for thy love! No good is there in any one that doth not cherish thee.
And these also:
To thee, O Asaad, of the pangs of passion I complain; Have pity on a slave of love, that burns for longing pain.
How long, I wonder, shall the hands of passion sport with me And love and dole and sleeplessness consume me, heart and brain?
Whiles do I plain me of a sea within my heart and whiles Of flaming; surely, this is strange, O thou my wish and bane!
Give o’er thy railing, censor mine, and set thyself to flee From love that maketh eyes for aye with burning tears to rain.
How oft, for absence and desire, I cry, “Alas, my grief!” But all my crying and lament in this my case are vain.
Thou hast with rigours made me sick, that passed my power to bear: Thou’rt the physician; do thou me with what befits assain.
O thou my censurer, forbear to chide me for my case, Lest, of Love’s cruel malady, perdition thee attain.
Then she scented the letter with odoriferous musk and
