Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 7.djvu/252

230 Fain would I hide my love for you: longing discovers it, For burnt and seared with passion’s fires are all my heart and brain. Have ruth on me, compassionate my case, for still to keep Our plighted faith in secrecy and trust I have been fain. Will fortune reunite me aye with you, my heart’s desire, You unto whom my soul cleaves still, bound fast with many a chain? My entrails ulcerated are with separation’s pangs: Would God with tidings from your camp to favour us you’d deign!

Then he went on, till he came without the city, where he found the river and fared on along its bank, knowing not whither he went.

To return to his wife, Menar es Sena. As she was about to set out, on the second day after the departure of the old woman with her children, there came in to her one of the king her father’s chamberlains and kissed the earth before her, saying, ‘O princess, the king thy father salutes thee and bids thee to him.’ So she rose and accompanied the chamberlain to her father, who made her sit by his side on the couch, and said to her, ‘O my daughter, know that I have had a dream this night, which maketh me fear for thee and that long sorrow will betide thee from this thy journey.’ ‘How so, O my father,’ asked she, ‘and what didst thou see in thy dream?’ Quoth he, ‘I dreamt that I entered a hidden treasure, wherein was great store of jewels and jacinths and other riches; but meseemed nought pleased of all this me save seven beazels, which were the finest things there. I chose out one of the seven jewels, for it was the smallest and finest and most lustrous of them and its beauty pleased me; so I took it in my hand and went forth. When I came without the door of the treasure, I opened my hand and turned over the jewel, rejoicing, when, behold, there swooped down on me out of the sky a strange bird from a far land (for it was not of the birds of our country), and snatching it from my hand, returned with it whence it came. Whereupon grief