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had eaten,] she sought of him wine and he went to the Jew and fetched it. Then they sat down and drank; and when she grew drunken, she took the lute and smiting it, fell a-singing and chanted the following verses:
How long shall I thus question my heart that’s drowned in woe? I’m mute for my complaining; but tears speak, as they flow.
They have forbid their image to visit me in sleep; So even my nightly phantom forsaketh me, heigho!
And when she had made an end of her song, she wept sore.
All this time, the young Damascene was hearkening, and whiles he likened her voice to that of his slave-girl and whiles he put away from him this thought, and the damsel had no whit of knowledge of him. Then she broke out again into song and chanted the following verses:
“Forget him,” quoth my censurers, “forget him; what is he?” “If I forget him, ne’er may God,” quoth I, “remember me!”
Now God forbid a slave forget his liege lord’s love! And how Of all things in the world should I forget the love of thee?
Pardon of God for everything I crave, except thy love, For on the day of meeting Him, that will my good deed be.
Then she drank three cups and filling the old man other three, sang the following verses:
His love he’d have hid, but his tears denounced him to the spy, For the heat of a red-hot coal that ’twixt his ribs did lie.
