"I see thee full of song and plaint and love's own ecstasy; Delighting in describing all the charms of loveliness:
Art smit by stroke of Love or hath shaft-shot wounded thee? None save the wounded ever show such signals of distress!
Ho thou! crown the wine cup and sing me singular Praises to Sulaymá, Al-Rabáb, Tan'oum addrest; [1]
Go round the grape-vine sun [2] which for mansion hath a jar; Whose East the cup boy is, and here my mouth that opes for West.
I'm jealous of the very clothes that dare her sides enroll When she veils her dainty body of the delicatest grace:
I envy every goblet of her lips that taketh toll When she sets the kissing cup on that sweetest kissing-place.
But deem not by the keen-edged scymitar I'm slain-- The hurts and harms I dree are from arrows of her eyes. I found her finger tips, as I met her once again, Deep-reddened with the juice of the wood that ruddy dyes; [3]
And cried, 'Thy palms thou stainedst when far away was I And this is how thou payest one distracted by his pine!'
Quoth she (enkindling in my heart a flame that burned high Speaking as one who cannot hide of longing love the sign),
'By thy life, this is no dye used for dyeing; so forbear Thy blame, nor in charging me with falsing Love persist!
But when upon our parting-day I saw thee haste to fare, The while were bared my hand and my elbow and my wrist;
'I shed a flood of blood-red tears and with fingers brushed away; Hence blood-reddened were the tips and still blood-red they remain.'
Had I wept before she wept, to my longing-love a prey, Before repentance came, I had quit my soul of pain;
- ↑ Sulaymá dim. of Salmá= any beautiful woman Rabáb = the viol mostly single stringed: Tan'oum=she who is soft and gentle. These fictitious names are for his old flames.
- ↑ i.e. wine. The distich is highly fanciful and the conceits would hardly occur to a
- ↑ Arab. "Andam," a term applied to Brazil-wood (also called "Bakkam") and to "dragon's blood, but not, I think, to tragacanth, the "goats thorn," which does not dye. Andam is often mentioned in The Nights.
