Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 8.djvu/158

146 How many a lover watches the darksome night, His eyes forbidden the taste of sleep’s delight! How many, whose tears like rivers adown a height Course down their cheeks for passion both night and day! Alas for Love and out on his whole array! My heart with his flaming fires is burnt away.

How many a mortal is maddened for love-despair, Wakeful, for void of sleep is the dusky air! Languor and pain are the weeds that he doth wear And even his dreams from him are banished aye. Alas for Love and out on his whole array! My heart with his flaming fires is burnt away.

How often my patience fails and my bones do waste And my tears, like a fount of blood, stream down in haste! For my life, that of old was pleasant and sweet of taste, A slender maiden hath bittered this many a day. Alas for Love and out on his whole array! My heart with his flaming fires is burnt away.

Alack for the man among men who loves like me, Whose eyes through the hours of the darkness sleepless be, Who drowns in his own despair, as it were a sea, And cries, for the stress of an anguish without allay, ‘Alas for Love and out on his whole array! My heart with his flaming fires is burnt away.’

Whom hath not Love stricken and wounded indeed? Who was there aye from his easy springes freed? Whose life is empty of him and who succeed In winning to his delights without affray? Alas for Love and out on his whole array! My heart with his flaming fires is burnt away.

Be Thou his helper, O Lord, who’s sick at heart; Protect him, Thou that the best protector art. To him fair patience to bear his woes impart; In all his troubles be Thou his help and stay. Alas for Love and out on his whole array! My heart with his flaming fires is burnt away.