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eyes like those of gazelles, nose like the point of the sabre and cheeks like blood-red anemones, mouth like Solomon’s seal and teeth like necklaces of pearls, navel holding an ounce of benzoin ointment and waist more slender than his body whom love hath wasted and whom concealment [of his passion] hath made sick, and buttocks heavier than two hills of sand; brief, in all she answered to the saying of him who says:
Her fair shape ravisheth, if face to face she did appear, And if she turn, for severance from her she slayeth sheer.
Sun-like, full-moon-like, sapling-like, unto her character Estrangement nowise appertains nor cruelty austere.
Under the bosom of her shift the garths of Eden are, and the full-moon revolveth still upon her neck-rings’ sphere.
She seemed [at once] a rising full moon and a browsing gazelle, a girl of nine and five,[1] putting to shame the moon and the sun, even as saith of her the eloquent and ingenious poet:
The likeness of the full-moon, faring o’er The heavens, five and five and after four;
’Tis not my fault, if she have made of me Its likeness, when it first in heaven doth soar.
White of skin, odoriferous of breath, it seemed as if she were [at once] fashioned of fire and moulded of crystal; rose-red was the cheek of her and perfect her shape and figure; even as saith of her one, describing her:
Scented with sandal and musk, right proudly doth she go, With gold and silver and rose and saffron-colour aglow.
A flower in a garden she is, a pearl in an ouch of gold Or an image in chapel set for worship of high and low.
Slender and shapely she is; vivacity bids her arise, But the weight of her hips says, “Sit, or softly and slowly go.”
- ↑ Quære fourteen [years old].
