Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 3.djvu/85

67 She unveiled to us, under the musk of the mole that is set on her cheek, A camphor-white dawning a-break through a night of the ambergris’ hue. Her spirit was stirred to chagrin and she bit on cornelian with pearls, Whose unions unvalued abide in a lakelet of sugary dew. She sighed for impatience and smote with her palm on the snows of her breast. Her hand left a scar; so I saw what never before met my view; Pens fashioned of coral (her nails), that, dinting the book of her breast Five lines, scored in ambergris ink, on a table of crystal drew, O ye that go girded with steel, O swordsmen, I rede you beware Of the stroke of her death-dealing eyes, that never looked yet but they slew! And guard yourselves, ye of the spears, and fence off her thrust from your hearts, If she tilt with the quivering lance of her shape straight and slender at you.

Then he gave a great cry and fell down in a swoon. Aboulhusn thought that his soul had departed his body and he ceased not from his swoon till daybreak, when he came to himself and talked with his friend, who sat with him till the forenoon. Then he left him and repaired to his shop. Hardly had he opened it, when the damsel came and stood before him. As soon as he saw her, she made a sign of salutation to him, which he returned; and she greeted him for her mistress, saying, ‘How doth Ali ben Bekkar?’ ‘O good damsel,’ replied he, ‘ask me not how he doth nor what he suffers for excess of passion; for he sleeps not by night neither rests by day; wakefulness wasteth him and affliction hath gotten the mastery of him and his case is distressful to his friend.’ Quoth she, ‘My lady salutes thee and him, and indeed she is in worse case than he. She hath written him a letter and here it is. When she gave it me, she said to me, “Do not return save with the answer.” So wilt thou go with me