Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 5.djvu/70

52 Thou think’st them to o’ertake, for all thou’rt fettered fast; Thy sins from thy desire do hinder thee, perdie. Thou wouldst to them consent and rivers from thine eyes Would run for them, if thou their excellence couldst see. Uneath to him to smell, who’s troubled with a rheum, Are flowers; the broker knows what worth the garments be. So supplicate thy Lord right humbly for His grace, And Providence, belike, shall help thy constancy; And thou shalt win thy will and from estrangement’s stress And eke rejection’s pains shall be at rest and free. The asylum of His grace is wide enough for all That seek: The One True God, the Conqueror is He! THE QUEEN OF THE SERPENTS.

There was once, of old days and in bygone ages and times, a Grecian sage called Daniel, who had scholars and disciples, and the wise men of Greece were obedient to his commandment and relied upon his learning; but God had denied him a son. One night, as he lay musing and weeping over the lack of a son, to whom he might bequeath his learning, he bethought himself that God (blessed and exalted be He) gives ear unto the prayer of those who resort to him and that there is no doorkeeper at the gate of His bounties and that He favours whom He will without stint and sends none empty away. So he besought the Most High, the Bountiful, to vouchsafe him a son, to succeed him, and to endow him abundantly with His favours. Then he returned and lay with his wife, who conceived by him the same night.

A few days after this he took ship for a certain place, but the ship was wrecked and he saved himself on a plank, with the loss of all his books, save only five leaves thereof. When he returned home, he laid the five leaves in a chest and locking it, gave the key to his wife, who was then big with child, and said to her, ‘Know that my last hour is at