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may cast about to do away thine affliction, and I will be thy ransom.’ Whereupon he wept sore and answered her with these verses:
Whenas a lover from his love to sever Fate hath wrought; For him save weariness and woe and misery there’s nought.
Within him sickness is, without is burning fire of love: His first is memory, his last is melancholy thought.
When she heard this, she marvelled at his eloquence and ready wit and goodliness of speech and at his answering her in verse and said to him, ‘O my brother, when didst thou fall into this case and what hath befallen thee, that I find thee speaking in verse and shedding plenteous tears? I conjure thee by Allah, O my brother, by the love that is between us, tell me what ails thee and discover thy secret to me, nor hide from me aught of that which hath befallen thee in our absence; for my breast is straitened and my life troubled on thine account.’ He sighed and shed tears like rain, after which he said, ‘O my sister, I fear, if I tell thee, that thou will not help me to my desire, but wilt leave me to perish miserably in my anguish.’ ‘No, by Allah, O my brother,’ answered she, ‘I will not abandon thee, though it cost me my life!’
So he told her all that had befallen him in her absence and that the cause of his distress and affliction was the passion he had conceived for the damsel whom he had seen, when he opened the forbidden door, and how he had not tasted meat nor drink for ten days past. Then he wept sore and recited the following verses:
Restore the heart as it used to be to the bosom and the lids Give back again to sleep and then forsake me, an ye list.
Do ye pretend that the nights have changed the covenant of love? May he [or she] who would change be held unworthy to exist!
The princess wept for his weeping and was moved to
