it before him and he ate his fill: after which he sat down and raised his charming voice and fell to reciting the chapter called Y. S.[1] The lady listened to him and found his voice as melodious as the psalms of David sung by David himself,[2] which when she heard, she exclaimed, "Allah disappoint the old hag who told me that he was affected with leprosy! Surely this is not the voice of one who hath such a disease; and all was a lie against him."[3] Then she took a lute of India-land workmanship and, tuning the strings, sang to it in a voice so sweet its music would stay the birds in the heart of heaven; and began these two couplets,
"I love a fawn with gentle white black eyes, * Whose walk the
willow-wand with envy kills:
Forbidding me he bids for rival-mine, * 'Tis Allah's grace who
grants to whom He wills!"
And when he heard her chant these lines he ended his recitation of the chapter, and began also to sing and repeated the following couplet,
"My Salám to the Fawn in the garments concealed, * And to roses in gardens of cheek revealed."
The lady rose up when she heard this, her inclination for him redoubled and she lifted the curtain; and Ala al-Din, seeing her, recited these two couplets,
"She shineth forth, a moon, and bends, a willow wand, * And
breathes out ambergris, and gazes, a gazelle.
Meseems as if grief loved my heart and when from her *
Estrangement I abide possession to it fell."[4]
Thereupon she came forward, swinging her haunches and gracefully swaying a shape the handiwork of Him whose boons are hidden; and each of them stole one glance of the eyes that cost them a
- ↑ Pronounced "Yá Sín" (chaps. xxxvi.) the "heart of the
Koran" much used for edifying recitation. Some pious Moslems in
Egypt repeat it as a Wazifah, or religious task, or as masses for
the dead, and all educated men know its 83 versets by rote.
- ↑ Arab. "Ál-Dáúd"=the family of David, i.e. David himself, a popular idiom. The prophet's recitation of the "Mazámir" (Psalter) worked miracles.
- ↑ There is a peculiar thickening of the voice in leprosy which at once betrays the hideous disease.
- ↑ These lines have occurred in Night clxxxiii. I quote
Mr. Payne (in loco) by way of variety.
