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Quoth she (and verily desire ran riot in her side, What while the dusky night let down the darkness like a tide),
“Night, in thy blackness is there none to company with me? Is there no swiver for this kaze of all men, far and wide?”
Then with her palm she smote thereon and said, what while she sighed The sighing of the sorrowful, the sad, the weeping-eyed,
“As by the toothstick’s use appears the beauty of the teeth, So, like a toothstick is the yard unto the kaze applied.
O, Muslims, stand your yards not up on end and is there none ’Mongst you will succour her who doth to you complain?” she cried.
Therewith my yard thrust out, erect, from underneath my clothes, And said to her, “Here, here’s for thee!” And I the while untied
The laces of her drawers. She made a show of fear and said, “Who’rt thou?” And I, “A youth thy cry that answereth,” replied
And straightway fell to routing her with what was like her wrist, A lusty routing, that full sore the buttocks mortified;
Till when, three courses run, I rose, “Fair fall thee of the swive!” Quoth she, and I, “May solacement thyself therefrom betide!”
And how excellent is the saying of another!
A fair one, to idolaters if she her face should show, They’d leave their idols and her face for only Lord would know.
If in the Eastward she appeared unto a monk, for sure, He’d cease from turning to the West and to the East bend low;[1]
And if into the briny sea one day she chanced to spit, Assuredly the salt sea’s floods straight fresh and sweet would grow.
And that of another:
I looked one look upon her and dazed was all my thought, For all the rare perfections wherewith the maid was fraught.
Suspicion that I loved her discovered unto her, And straight the supposition her cheeks to redden wrought.
I saluted her and she said to me, “Welcome and fair welcome!” and taking me by the hand, made me sit down beside her; whereupon, of the excess of my passion,
