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If, by thy life, there pass thee by my funeral train, to wit, A bier borne on the necks of four, wilt grudge to follow it?
Wilt thou not follow in its track, that so thou mayst salute The sepulchre of one who’s dead, committed to the pit?
When she heard this, she wept sore and said to him, ‘By Allah, I thought not that passion had come to such a pass with thee, as to cast thee into the arms of death! Had I known this, I had been favourable to thee, and thou shouldst have enjoyed thy desire.’ At this, his tears streamed down, like the cloud-showers, and he repeated the following verse:
She draweth near to me, when death hath come betwixt us two And proffereth union, when it no profit can me do.
Then he gave one sigh and died, and she fell on him, kissing him and weeping, till she swooned away. When she came to herself she charged her people bury her in his grave and recited the following verses, with streaming eyes:
We lived upon the earth a life of comfort and delight: Country and tribe and dwelling-place alike of us were proud;
But Fortune and the shifts of time did rend our loves apart, And now the grave uniteth us within a single shroud.
Then she fell again to weeping and ceased not from tears and lament, till she swooned away. She lay three days, senseless; then died and was buried in his grave. This is one of the strange chances of love.
THE VIZIER OF YEMEN AND HIS YOUNG BROTHER.
Bedreddin, Vizier of Yemen, had a young brother of singular beauty and kept strait watch over him. So he applied himself to seek a governor for him and coming upon an elder of dignified and reverend aspect, chaste and pious, lodged him in a house next his own, whence
