Page:Man in the Panther's Skin.djvu/229

 1273. "By thy sun (life)! until now I thought not thou wert alive; as for me, methought my life and all my resource had passed away. Now when I hear (news of thee), I magnify the Creator and humble myself before God. All mine erstwhile grief I weigh as joy.

1274. "Thy life is sufficient for my heart to hope in, a heart all wounded and so consumed! Think of me, remember me as one lost to thee; I sit nursing the love I planted.

1275. "Now, O mine own, my story is not to be written to thee by me; the tongue will tire, none that hear will believe! P'hatman took me from sorcerers; may God protect her! Now again Fate hath done what befits it.

1276. "Fate hath now added worse woe to my woe, my ill luck was not appeased by these manifold afflictions; and again it delivered me into the hands of the Kadjis, hard to combat; Fate hath done to us, mine own, all that hath befallen us.

1277. "I am sitting in a castle so lofty that eyes can scarce see the ground; the road enters by a passage, over it stand guards; day and night knights miss not their turn as sentries, they will kill those that engage them, like fire will they envelop them.

1278. "Surely thou thinkest not that these are of the same kind as other warriors? Slay me not with woes worse than the present! I shall see thee dead, I shall be burnt up like tinder by steel. (Since) I am sundered from thee, renounce me with a heart harder than rock itself.

1278a. "Beloved, sorrow not with such grief! Tell me, can there be for me another with the form of an aloe-tree! Life without thee is nought for me, henceforth I should be full of regret; either I would cast myself down from the rock or slay myself with a knife.

1279. "By thy sun (life)! thy moon will fall to the lot of none save thee! By thy sun! to none shall she