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with Cairene motitations and Yemani wrigglings and Abyssinian sobbings and Hindi torsions and Nubian lasciviousness and Rifi[1] leg-liftings and Damiettan gruntings and Upper Egyptian heat and Alexandrian languor, and this damsel united in herself all these attributes, together with excess of beauty and amorous grace; and indeed she was even as saith of her the poet:
By Allah, I will never all my life long forget her, my dear, And those only will I tender who shall bring her to me to draw near!
Now glory to her Maker and Creator be given evermore! As the full moon of the heavens in her aspect and her gait she doth appear.
Though my sin, indeed, be sore and my offending in loving her be great, I know repentance not, whilst of her favours a hope to me be clear.
She, indeed, hath made me weariful and wakeful, full of sorrow, sick for love: Yea, my heart is all confounded at her beauty, dazed for trouble and for fear;
And I go a line of verse for e’er repeating that none knoweth ’mongst the folk Save the man who rhymes and verses hath recited and studied many a year.
‘None knoweth of love-longing save he only who hath its pains endured And none but he can tell the taste of passion, who’s proved its woe and cheer.
Night dccclxxv.So Noureddin lay with the damsel in solace and delight, clad in the strait-linked garments of embracement, secure against the accidents of night and day, and they passed the night after the goodliest fashion, fearing not, in love-delight, abundance of talk and prate. As says of them the right excellent poet:
Cleave fast to her thou lov’st and let the envious rail amain; For calumny and envy ne’er to favour love were fain.
Lo, the Compassionate hath made no fairer thing to see Than when one couch in its embrace enfoldeth lovers twain,
Each to the other’s bosom clasped, clad in their own delight, Whilst hand with hand and arm with arm about their necks enchain.
- ↑ The Rif is the north-west coast of Morocco, formerly celebrated as the habitat of the famous Rif pirates. According to D’Herbelot, Lower Egypt also bears the name of Er Rif.
