Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 8.djvu/157

145 gazelle or a bending branch, and it chanced that she sat one day at the lattice aforesaid and heard Noureddin singing and solacing himself under his afflictions by reciting the following verses:

O censor of love, thou that wast fortunate aye, Bright with the sheen of thy joys as the blossomed spray, If Fate with its plagues should bite on thee one day, Then of the taste of its bitter cup thou’lt say, ‘Alas for Love and out on his whole array! My heart with his flaming fires is burnt away.’

But to-day thou art safe as yet from his cruel spite And his perfidy irks thee not and his fell unright; Yet blame not, I prithee, the love-distracted wight Who cries, for the stress of the passion to which he’s prey, ‘Alas for Love and out on his whole array! My heart with his flaming fires is burnt away.’

Be not of those that look on love with disdain, But rather excuse and pity the lovers’ pain, Lest thou one day be bound in the self-same chain And drink of the self-same bitter draught as they. Alas for Love and out on his whole array! My heart with his flaming fires is burnt away.

I too of old was empty of heart like thee And lay down to rest in peace and passion free; The taste of the sleepless nights was strange to me Until he called me to dwell beneath his sway. Alas for Love and out on his whole array! My heart with his flaming fires is burnt away.

Yea, none can tell of Love and its sore duresse But he who is sick and weak for its longsomeness, He who hath lost his reason for love-distress, Whose drink is the bitter dregs of his own dismay. Alas for Love and out on his whole array! My heart with his flaming fires is burnt away.

VOL. VIII.