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Breath of the breeze, I prithee tell, quoth I, shall its delight To this abiding-place return, by fairer fortune brought?
And shall I yet a fawn enjoy, whose shape hath ravished me, Yea, and whose languor-drooping lids have wasted me to nought?
When he heard this, he looked in at the door and saw a garden of the goodliest of gardens, and at its farther end a curtain of red brocade, embroidered with pearls and jewels, behind which sat four damsels, and amongst them a young lady over four and under five feet in height, as she were the round of the moon and the shining full moon. She had great liquid black eyes and joined eyebrows, a mouth as it were Solomon’s seal and lips and teeth like pearls and coral; and indeed she ravished all wits with her beauty and grace and symmetry. When Mesrour saw her, he entered the garden and went on, till he came to the curtain: whereupon she raised her head and saw him. So he saluted her and she returned his greeting with dulcet speech; and when he beheld her more closely, his reason was confounded and his heart transported. Then he looked at the garden and saw that it was full of jessamine and gillyflowers and violets and roses and orange blossoms and all manner sweet-scented flowers. All the trees were laden with fruits and there ran down water from four estrades, which occupied the four angles of the garden. He looked at the first estrade and found the following verses written around it with vermilion:
May grief ne’er enter thee nor yet dismay, O house, nor fortune e’er thy lord bewray!
Fair fall the house that harbours every guest, When straitened upon him is place and way!
Then he looked at the second estrade and found following written thereon in red gold:
