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the cavern door; but the hermit made him no answer, neither came forth to him; wherefore he sighed heavily and recited the following verses:
What way is open unto me, to my desire to get And put off weariness and toil and trouble and regret?
All pains and terrors have combined on me, to make me hoar And old of head and heart, whilst I a very child am yet.
I find no friend to solace me of longing and unease, Nor one ’gainst passion and its stress to aid me and abet.
Alas, the torments I endure for waste and wistful love! Fortune, meseems, ’gainst me is turned and altogether set.
Ah, woe’s me for the lover’s pain, unresting, passion-burnt, Him who in parting’s bitter cup his lips perforce hath wet!
His wit is ravished clean away by separation’s woe, Fire in his heart and all consumed his entrails by its fret.
Ah, what a dreadful day it was, when to her stead I came And that, which on the door was writ, my eyes confounded met!
I wept, until I gave the earth to drink of my despair; But still from friend and foe I hid the woes that me beset.
Then strayed I forth till, in the waste, a lion sprang on me And would have slain me straight; but him with flattering words I met
And soothed him. So he spared my life and succoured me, as ’twere He too had known love’s taste and been entangled in its net.
Yet, for all this, could I but win to come to my desire, All, that I’ve suffered and endured, straightway I should forget.
O thou, that harbour’st in thy cave, distracted from the world, Meseems thou’st tasted love and been its slave, O anchoret!
Hardly had he made an end of these verses when, behold, the door of the cavern opened and he heard one say, ‘Alas, the pity of it!’ So he entered and saluted the hermit, who returned his greeting and said to him, ‘What is thy name?’ ‘Uns el Wujoud,’ answered the young man. ‘And what brings thee hither?’ asked the hermit. So he told him his whole story, whereat he wept and said, ‘O Uns el Wujoud, these twenty years have I dwelt in this place, but never beheld I any here, till the other day, when I heard a noise of cries and weeping, and looking forth in the direction of the sound,
