Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 1.djvu/167

149 By his neck and by its beauty, by the softness of his breast And the pair of twin pomegranates that my eyes discover there, By his heavy hips that tremble, both in motion and repose, And the slender waist above them, all too slim their weight to bear, By his skin’s unsullied satin and the quickness of his spright, By the matchless combination in his form of all things fair, By his hand’s perennial bounty and his true and trusty speech, By the stars that smile upon him, favouring and debonair, Lo, the smell of musk none other than his very fragrance is, And the ambergris’s perfume breathes around him everywhere. Yea, the sun in all its splendour cannot with his grace compare, Seeming but a shining fragment that he from his nail doth pare.

I stole a look at him, which cost me a thousand sighs, for my heart was taken with his love, and I said to him, “O my lord, tell me what I asked thee.” “I hear and obey,” answered he. “Know, O handmaid of God, that this city was the capital of my father, who is the king thou sawest on the throne, changed to a black stone, and as for the queen on the bed, she was my mother; and they and all the people of the city were Magians, worshipping the fire, instead of the All-powerful King, and swearing by the fire and the light and the shade and the heat and the revolving sphere. My father had no child, till I was vouchsafed to him in his old age, and he reared me and I grew up and flourished. Now, as my good star would have it, there was with us an old woman stricken in years, who was at heart a Muslim, believing in God and His prophet, but conforming outwardly to the religion of my people. My father had confidence in her, supposing her to be of his own belief, and showed her exceeding favour, for that he knew her to be trusty and virtuous; so when I grew to a fitting age, he committed me to her charge, saying, ‘Take him and do thy best to give him a good education and teach him the things of our faith.’ So she took me and taught me the tenets of Islam and the ordinances of ablution and prayer and made me learn