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Six damsels fair and bright have captivated me; My blessing and my peace the six fair maidens greet!
My life, indeed, are they, my hearing and my sight, Yea, and my very drink, my pleasance and my meat.
No other love can bring me solace for their charms, And slumber, after them, no more to me is sweet.
Alas, my long regret, my weeping for their loss! Would I have ne’er been born, to know this sore defeat!
For eyes, bedecked and fair with brows like bended bows, Have smitten me to death with arrows keen and fleet.
When the letter came to El Mamoun’s hands, he clad the six damsels in rich apparel and giving them threescore thousand dinars, sent them back to their master, who rejoiced in them with an exceeding joy,—more by token of the money they brought him,—and abode with them in all delight and pleasance of life, till there came to them the Destroyer of Delights and the Sunderer of Companies.
HAROUN ER RASHID AND THE DAMSEL AND ABOU NUWAS.
The Khalif Haroun er Reshid, being one night exceeding restless and oppressed with melancholy thought, went out and walked about his palace, till he came to a chamber, over whose doorway hung a curtain. He raised the curtain and saw, at the upper end of the room, a bed, on which lay something black, as it were a man asleep, with a candle on his right hand and another on his left and by his side a flagon of old wine, over against which stood the cup. The Khalif wondered at this, saying, ‘How came yonder black by this wine-service?’ Then, drawing near the bed, he found that it was a girl asleep there, veiled with her hair, and uncovering her face, saw that it was like the moon on the night of her full. So he filled a cup of wine and drank it to the roses
