Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 5.djvu/69

51 him; nor was it but a few days after, when one pulled me from behind, and I turned and behold, it was he again. Quoth he, ‘I conjure thee, ask thy desire of me.’ So I begged him to pray three prayers to God for me; first, that He would make me love poverty; secondly, that I might never lie down to sleep upon known provision; and thirdly, that He the Bountiful One would vouchsafe me to look upon His face. So he prayed for me, as I wished, and departed from me. And indeed God hath granted me the first two prayers; for He hath made me in love with poverty, so that, by Allah, there is nought in the world dearer to me than it, and since such a year, I have never lain down upon assured provision; yet hath He never let me lack of aught. As for the third prayer, I trust that He will vouchsafe me that also, even as He hath granted the two others, for He is bountiful and excellently beneficent. And may God have mercy on him who saith:

Renouncement, lowliness, the fakir’s garments be; In patched and tattered clothes still fares the devotee. Pallor adorneth him, as, on their latest nights, The moons with pallor still embellished thou mayst see. Long rising up by night to pray hath wasted him, And from his lids the tears stream down, as ’twere a sea. The thought of God to him his very housemate is; For bosom-friend, by night, th’ Omnipotent hath he. God the Protector helps the fakir in his need, And birds and beasts no less to succour him agree. On his account, the wrath of God on men descends, And by his grace, the rains fall down on wood and lea. And if he pray one day to do away a plague, The oppressor’s slain and men from tyrants are made free; For all the folk are sick, afflicted and diseased, And he’s the pitying leach withouten stint or fee. His forehead shines; an thou but look upon his face, Thy heart is calmed, the lights of heaven appear to thee. O thou that shunnest these, their virtues knowing not, Woe’s thee! Thou’rt shut from them by thine iniquity.