Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 9.djvu/22

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after which said the young man, ‘O my lords, if you have any want, let us know it, that we may have the honour of satisfying it.’ ‘It is well,’ answered they. ‘We came not to thy dwelling but because of a voice we heard from behind the wall of thy house, and we would fain hear it [again] and know her to whom it belongs. So, if thou deem well to vouchsafe us this favour, it will be of the munificence of thy nature, and we will after return whence we came.’ ‘Ye are welcome,’ answered the host and turning to a black slave-girl, said to her, ‘Fetch me thy mistress such an one.’ So she went away and returning with a chair of chinaware, cushioned with brocade, set it down; then withdrew again and presently returned with a damsel, as she were the moon on the night of its full, who sat down on the chair. Then the black girl gave her a bag of satin, Night dccccxlviii.from which she brought out a lute, inlaid with jacinths and jewels and furnished with pegs of gold, and tuned its strings, even as saith the poet of her and her lute:

When in her lap she sets it, the soul in it she sets, Its pegs [and strings] its organs by which its thought hath speech;
Nor doth her right hand outrage its beauties,^[1] but her left On equal wise and measure amendeth still the breach.^[2]

Then she strained it to her bosom, bending over it as the mother bends over her child, and swept the strings, which complained as the child complains to its mother; after which she played upon it and sang the following verses:

Vouchsafe me Fortune the return of him I love, and I Will chide him, saying, ‘Pass about thy cups, O friend; fill high
And drink of wine that mingleth not with heart of man but he Still barters care for cheer and calls a truce with tear and sigh.

1. By striking the strings, while tuning.
2. i.e. by screwing the strings up to the proper pitch, by means of the pegs.