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What ails my tears a flame to kindle in my blood? The fires within my heart still burn and never spare.
Drowned am I in the flood of my unceasing tears And in hell-fire I flame with love-longing fore’er.
When the Princess Meryem heard the eloquence of his verses and the excellence of his speech, she was assured that it was indeed her lord Noureddin; but she dissembled with the vizier’s daughter and said to her, ‘By the virtue of the Messiah and the True Faith, I thought not thou knewest of my sadness!’ Then she withdrew from the window and returned to her own place, whilst the vizier’s daughter went about her occasions. The princess waited awhile, then returned to the window and sat there, gazing upon her beloved Noureddin and feasting her eyes on his beauty and grace. And indeed, she saw that he was like unto the moon at its full; but he was ever sighing and pouring forth tears, for that he recalled what was past. Then he recited the following verses:
Union with my belovéd for ever I await, But gain not; whilst life’s bitter for ever is my mate.
My tears are like the ocean in their unending flow; But, when I meet my censors, I force them[1] still abate.
Out upon him who cursed us with parting by his spells![2] Could I but win to meet him, I’d tear his tongue out straight.
To blame the days availeth no whit, for that they’ve wrought: With bitterness unmingled they’ve blent my cup of fate.
To whom shall I address me but you, to whom repair, Since in your courts, a hostage, I left my heart of late?
Who’ll quit me of a despot, a tyrant, in unright Who waxes, when I plain me for justice at his[3] gate?
- ↑ i.e. my tears.
- ↑ lit. Out on a prayer who imprecated our parting!
- ↑ It need hardly be noted that the feminine must here (as in the rest of the piece) be understood for the masculine pronoun. The Arabs consider it indelicate directly to speak of women in the language of passion, and therefore very commonly (though by no means invariably)
