Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night - Volume 4.djvu/277

 and that, when hoariness descendeth upon the head, delights pass away and the hour of death draweth in sight? Were not black the most illustrious of things, Allah had not set it in the core of the heart and the pupil of the eye; and how excellent is the saying of the poet,

'I love not black girls but because they show * Youth's colour, tinct of eye and heartcore's hue; Nor are in error who unlove the white, * And hoary hairs and winding-sheet eschew.'

And that said of another,

'Black girls, not white, are they * All worthy love I     see: Black girls wear dark-brown lips; * Whites, blotch of     leprosy.'

And of a third,

'Black girls in acts are white, and 'tis as though * Like eyes, with purest shine and sheen they show; If I go daft for her, be not amazed; * Black bile drives melancholic-mad we know 'Tis as my colour were the noon of night; * For all no moon it be, its splendours glow.

Moreover, is the foregathering of lovers good but in the night? Let this quality and profit suffice thee. What protecteth lovers from spies and censors like the blackness of night's darkness; and what causeth them to fear discovery like the whiteness of the dawn'