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returned after awhile, bearing a bag of green satin, with cords of gold. She took the bag from him and opening it, shook it, whereupon there fell thereout two-and-thirty pieces of wood, which she fitted, one into another, till they became a polished lute of Indian workmanship.
Then she uncovered her wrist and laying the lute in her lap, bent over it, as the mother bends over her child, and swept the strings with the tips of her fingers; whereupon it moaned and resounded and yearned after its former habitations; and it remembered the waters that gave it to drink, [whilst yet in the tree,] and the earth whence it sprang and wherein it grew up and the carpenters who cut it and the polishers who polished it and the merchants who exported it and the ships that carried it; and it cried out and wailed and lamented; and it was as if she questioned it of all these things and it answered her with the tongue of the case, reciting the following verses:
Whilom I was a tree, wherein the nightingales did nest; Whilst green my head, I swayed for them with longing and unrest.
They made melodious moan on me, and I their plaining learnt, And so my secret was by this lament made manifest.
The woodman felled me to the earth, though guiltless of offence, And wrought of me a slender lute, by singers’ hands carest;
But, when their fingers sweep my strings, they tell that I am slain, One with duresse amongst mankind afflicted and opprest;
Wherefore each boon-companion, when he heareth my lament, Grows mad with love and drunkenness o’ermasters every guest,
And God inclineth unto me their hearts and I indeed Am to the highest place advanced in every noble breast.
All who in loveliness excel do clip my waist and in The arms of every languorous-eyed gazelle my form is prest.
May God the Lord ne’er sever us, nor live the loved one aye Who with estrangement and disdain her lover would molest!
Then she was silent awhile, but presently taking the lute in her lap, bent over it, as the mother bends over her
