Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night - Volume 3.djvu/198

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

were in the highest spirits, glad and gay, when he bade them throw open the garden pavilion. So they opened the doors and windows and lighted the tapers till the place shone in the season of darkness even as the day. Then the eunuchs removed thither the wine-service and (quoth Abu al-Hasan) "I saw drinking-vessels and rarities whose like mine eyes never beheld, vases of gold and silver and all manner of noble metals and precious stones, such as no power of description can describe, till indeed it seemed to me I was dreaming, for excess of amazement at what I saw!" But as for Ali bin Bakkar, from the moment Shams al-Nahar left him, he lay strown on the ground for stress of love and desire; and, when he revived, he fell to gazing upon these things that had not their like and saying to Abu al-Hasan, "O my brother, I fear lest the Caliph see us or come to know of our case; but the most of my fear is for thee. For myself, of a truth I know that I am about to be lost past recourse, and the cause of my destruction is naught but love and longing and excess of desire and distraction, and disunion from my beloved after union with her; but I beseech Allah to deliver us from this perilous predicament." And they ceased not to look out of the balcony on the Caliph who was taking his pleasure, till the banquet was spread before him, when he turned to one of the damsels and said to her, "O Gharám, [1] let us hear some of thine enchanting songs." So she took the lute and tuning it, began singing,

   "The longing of a Bedouin maid, whose folks are far away, * Who yearns after the willow of the Hejaz and the bay, [2]--
   Whose tears, when she on travellers lights, might for their water serve * And eke her her passion, with its heat, their bivouac-fire purvey,--
   Is not more fierce nor ardent than my longing for my love, * Who deems that I commit a crime in loving him alway." [3]

Now when Shams al-Nahar heard these verses she slipped off the stool whereon she sat and fell to the earth fainting and became insensible to the world around her; upon which the damsels came and lifted her up. And when Ali bin Bakkar saw this from the balcony he also slipped down senseless, and Abu al-Hasan said, "

  1. i.e. eagerness, desire, love-longing.
  2. Arab. "Rind," which may mean willow (oriental), bay or aloes wood: Al-Asma'i denies that it ever signifies myrtle.
  3. These lines occur in Night cxiv.: by way of variety I give (with permission) Mr. Payne's version (iii. 59).