Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 1.djvu/185

165 When Shehrzad had made an end of her story, Dunyazad said to her, “By Allah, this is indeed a pleasant and delightful story, never was heard its like! But now, O my sister, tell us another story, to beguile the rest of the waking hours of our night.” “With all my heart,” answered Shehrzad, “if the King give me leave.” And he said, “Tell thy story, and that quickly.” Then said she, “They say, O King of the age and lord of the time and the day, that THE THREE APPLES.

The Khalif Haroun er Reshid summoned his Vizier Jaafer one night and said to him, ‘I have a mind to go down into the city and question the common people of the conduct of the officers charged with its government; and those of whom they complain, we will depose, and those whom they commend, we will advance.’ Quoth Jaafer, ‘I hear and obey.’ So the Khalif and Jaafer and Mesrour went down into the town and walked about the streets and markets till, as they were passing through a certain alley, they came upon an old man walking along at a leisurely pace, with a fishing-net and a basket on his head and a staff in his hand, and heard him repeat the following verses:

They tell me I shine, by my wisdom and wit, Midst the rest of my kind, as the moon in the night. “A truce to your idle discourses!” I cry, “What’s knowledge, indeed, unattended by might?” If you offered me, knowledge and wisdom and all, With my inkhorn and papers, in pawn for a mite, To buy one day’s victual, the pledge they’d reject And cast, like an unread petition, from sight. Sorry, indeed, is the case of the poor, And his life, what a load of chagrin and despite! In summer, he’s pinched for a living and cowers O’er the fire-pot in winter, for warmth and for light.