Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night - Volume 5.djvu/68

 anent what thou shouldst do to attain thy desire." Thus it was with them; but as regards Rose-in-Hood, when they brought her to the mountain and set her in the castle and she beheld its ordering, she wept and exclaimed, "By Allah, thou art a goodly place, save that thou lackest in thee the presence of the beloved!" [FN#53] Then seeing birds in the island, she bade her people set snares for them and put all they caught in cages within the castle; and they did so. But she sat at a lattice and bethought her of what had passed, and desire and passion and distraction redoubled upon her, till she burst into tears and repeated these couplets,

"O to whom now, of my desire complaining sore, shall I *     Bewail my parting from my fere compellPd thus to fly?  Flames rage within what underlies my ribs, yet hide them I *     In deepest secret dreading aye the jealous hostile spy:   I am grown as lean, attenuate as any pick of tooth, [FN#54] *     By sore estrangement, absence, ardour, ceaseless sob and sigh.   Where is the eye of my beloved to see how I'm become *     Like tree stripped bare of leafage left to linger and to die.   They tyrannised over me whom they confined in place *     Whereto the lover of my heart may never draw him nigh:   I beg the Sun for me to give greetings a thousandfold, *     At time of rising and again when setting from the sky,   To the beloved one who shames a full moon's loveliness, *     When shows that slender form that doth the willow-branch outvie.   If Rose herself would even with his cheek, I say of her * 'Thou art not like it if to me my portion thou deny:' [FN#55]