Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 6.djvu/373

343 all limits in him; his entrails were occupied with her service and his heart was aflame with the fire of love-longing, so that he swooned away and fell to the ground senseless. When he came to himself, she had passed from his sight and was hidden from him among the trees; so he sighed from his inmost heart and repeated the following verses:

The old woman ceased not to carry the princess about the garden, till she brought her to the place where the prince lay in wait, when she said, ‘O thouThou [sic] whose bounties are hidden, vouchsafe us assurance from that we fear!’ The prince, hearing the signal, left his hiding-place and walked among the trees, swaying to and fro with a proud and graceful gait and a shape that shamed the branches. His brow was pearled with sweat and his cheeks red as the afterglow, extolled be the perfection of God the Supreme in that He hath created! When the princess caught sight of him, she gazed a long while on him and saw his beauty and grace and symmetry and his eyes that wantoned, gazelle-wise, and his shape that outvied the branches of the myrobalan; wherefore her reason was confounded and her soul captivated and her heart transfixed with the arrows of his glances. Then she said to the old woman, ‘O my nurse, whence came yonder handsome youth?’ ‘Where is he, O my lady?’ enquired the nurse. ‘There he is,’ answered Heyat en Nufous; ‘close at hand, among the trees.’ The