Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 9.djvu/256

224 She goeth round midst younglings, to whom Fate bows, submiss, And none with aught betideth, save that he hath in gree; And say to who pretendeth to excellence in love, “One thing thou’st learnt, but many are still concealed from thee.”

But best of all is the saying of Ibn Elel [sic] Mutezz:

God water the tree-shaded island and the convent Abdoun that hight With a constant dropping of rain-clouds, that cease not, day or night! How oft for the draught of the morning awakened me there of yore, In the forefront of dawn, when the swallow had not yet taken to flight, The voice of the monks of the convent, indeed, and the sound of their chant, As they crooned o’er their prayers in the gloaming, with their tunics of black bedight! How many a loveling among them, eye-painted with languor, abode, Whose eyelids on eyes shut that glittered with lustrous black and white,