Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night - Volume 4.djvu/217

 proudly turned away from me, showed shoulders, cried aloud:— * 'No! no! by Him, whose hest mankind from nothingness hath made For hoary head and grizzled chin I've no especial-love: * What! stuff my mouth with cotton ere in sepulchre I'm     laid?'"

Now when the broker heard her words he said, "By Allah, thou art excusable, and thy price is ten thousand gold pieces!" So he told her owner that she would not accept of old man Rashid al-Din, and he said, "Consult her concerning another." Thereupon a second man came forward and said, "Be she mine for what price was offered by the oldster she would have none of;" but she looked at him and seeing that his beard was dyed, said "What be this fashion lewd and base and the blackening of the hoary face?" And she made a great show of wonderment and repeated these couplets,

"Showed me Sir Such-an-one a sight and what a frightful sight! *     A neck by Allah, only made for slipper-sole to smite A beard the meetest racing ground where gnats and lice contend, *     A brow fit only for the ropes thy temples chafe and     bite. O thou enravish" by my cheek and beauties of my form, * Why so translate thyself to youth and think I deem it right? Dyeing disgracefully that white of reverend aged hairs, * And hiding for foul purposes their venerable white! Thou goest with one beard and comest back with quite another, * Like Punch-and-Judy man who works the Chinese shades by night.