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Quoth th’ Iman Abou Nuwas, past-master sure was he In every canon of debauch and jolly knavery,
“O ye that love the downy cheeks of younglings, take your fill Of a delight, in Paradise that will not founden be.”
So if one enlarge in praise of a girl and wish to enhance her value by the mention of her charms, Night ccccxxi.he likens her to a boy, because of the illustrious qualities that belong to the latter, even as saith the poet:
Boylike of buttocks, to and fro, in amorous dalliance, She sways as sway the nodding canes that in the north wind dance.
If boys, then, were not superior to girls, why should the latter be likened to them? And know also, may God the Most High preserve thee, that a boy is easy to be led, adapting himself to the wish, pleasant of commerce and manners, inclining to assent rather than difference, especially when the down on his face creeps lightly and the hair darkens on his lips and the vermilion of early youth runs in his cheeks, so that he is like the full moon; and how goodly is the saying of Abou Temmam:[1]
“The whiskers on his cheek appear;” the slanderers said to me; Quoth I, “That’s none of his defect; so give me no more prate.”
What time he came of age to bear buttocks that here and there Pulled him and over beads of pearl his lips’ hair darkened late
And eke the rose a solemn oath, full fast and binding, swore Its ruddy marvels from his cheek should never separate,
I with my eyelids spoke to him, without the need of speech, And for reply thereto was what his eyebrows answered straight.
His goodliness still goodlier is than that thou knewst of yore, And the hair guardeth him from those his charms would violate.
Brighter and sweeter are his charms, now on his cheek the down Shows and the hair upon his lips grows dark and delicate;
And those who chide me for the love of him, when they take up Their parable of him and me, say evermore, “His mate.”
- ↑ Abou Temmam et Tai (of the tribe of Tai), a famous poet of the first half of the ninth century and postmaster at Mosul under the Khalif Wathic Billah (commonly known as Vathek), A.D. 842–849. He was the compiler of the famous anthology of ancient Arabian poetry, known as the Hemaseh (Hamasa).
