Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 7.djvu/251

229 Severance I ne’er could brook an hour; so how, now months have passed O’er me estranged from her I love, can I my sufferings tell? Jealous of every lightest breeze that blew on thee was I, Exceeding jealous, yea, of aught the tender fair befell.

Then he once more fell down in a swoon, and when he came to himself, he found himself without the palace, whither they had dragged him on his face. (Now this was grievous to Shewahi; but she dared not remonstrate with the queen by reason of the violence of her wrath.) So he rose, stumbling in his skirts and hardly crediting his escape from Nour el Huda, and went forth, distracted and knowing not whither to go. The world, for all its wideness, was straitened upon him and he found none to comfort him nor any to whom he might resort for counsel or refuge; wherefore he gave himself up for lost, for that he availed not to journey [to his own country] and knew none to travel with him, neither knew he the way [thither] nor might pass through the Valley of Jinn and the Land of Beasts and the Island of Birds. So he bewept himself, till he fainted, and when he revived, he bethought him of his children and his wife and of that which might befall her with her sister, repenting him of having come to those parts and hearkened to none, and recited the following verses:

Let mine eyes weep for loss of her I love, with tears like rain: Rare is my solace and my woes increase on me amain. The cup of severance unmixt I’ve drunken to the dregs. Who shall avail the loss of friends and dear ones to sustain? Ye spread the carpet of reproach ’twixt me and you; ah when, O carpet of reproach, wilt thou be folded up again? I wake; ye sleep. If ye pretend that I’ve forgot your love, Lo, I’ve forgotten to forget, and solace all is vain. Indeed, my heart is racked with love and longing for your sight And you the only leaches are can heal me of my pain. See ye not what is fall’n on me through your abandonment? I am abased to high and low, because of your disdain.