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For she for love of thee’s distraught, as needs must be the case; Her eyes are ever void of sleep; she weeps and wails apace.”
If he show favour and incline to grant the wished-for grace, ’Tis well and good; but, if ye still read anger in his face,
Dissemble then with him and say, “We know her not, not we.”
Quoth I to myself, “Verily, if the owner of this voice be fair, she unites beauty of person and eloquence and sweetness of voice.” Then I drew near the door, and raising the curtain little by little, beheld a damsel, white as the moon, when it rises on its fourteenth night, with joined eyebrows and languorous eyelids, breasts like twin pomegranates and dainty lips like twin corn-marigolds,[1] mouth as it were Solomon’s seal and teeth that sported with the reason of rhymester and proser, even as saith the poet:
O mouth of the belovéd, who set thy pearls arow And eke with wine fulfilled thee and camomiles like show,
And lent the morning-glory unto thy smile, and who Hath with a padlock sealed thee of rubies sweet of show?
Whoso but looks upon thee is mad for joy and pride. How should it fare with him, who kisseth thee, heigho!
And as saith another:
O pearls of the teeth of my love, Have ruth on cornelian and spare
To vie with it! Shall it not find You peerless and passing compare?
In fine, she comprised all manner of loveliness and was a ravishment to men and women, nor could the beholder satisfy himself with the sight of her beauty; for she was as the poet hath said of her:
- ↑ The word ucwaneh, here used in the dual number, usually designates the teeth, in its common meaning of “camomile-flower”: but the lips are here expressly mentioned, and this fact, together with that of the substitution, in the Breslau edition, of the word akikan (two cornelians or rubies) for ucwanetan (two camomiles), as in the Calcutta and Boulac editions, shows that the word is intended to be taken in its rarer meaning of “corn-marigold.”
