lonely, bound in chains of iron, with the blood streaming from his sides and far from those he loved. So he wept and called to mind his brother and the honours he erst enjoyed.--And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say.
When it was the Two Hundred and Twenty-ninth Night,
She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that As'ad called to mind his brother and the honours he erst enjoyed; so he wept and groaned and complained and poured forth tears in floods and improvised these couplets,
"Easy, O Fate! how long this wrong, this injury, * Robbing each morn and eve my brotherhood fro' me? Is't not time now thou deem this length sufficiency * Of woes and, O thou Heart of Rock, show clemency? My friends thou wrongedst when thou madst each enemy * Mock and exult me for thy wrongs, thy tyranny: My foeman's heart is solaced by the things he saw * In me, of strangerhood and lonely misery: Suffice thee not what came upon my head of dole, * Friends lost for evermore, eyes wan and pale of blee? But must in prison cast so narrow there is naught * Save hand to bite, with bitten hand for company; And tears that tempest down like goodly gift of cloud, * And longing thirst whose fires weet no satiety. Regretful yearnings, singulfs and unceasing sighs, * Repine, remembrance and pain's very ecstacy: Desire I suffer sore and melancholy deep, * And I must bide a prey to endless phrenesy: I find me ne'er a friend who looks with piteous eye, * And seeks my presence to allay my misery: Say, liveth any intimate with trusty love * Who for mine ills will groan, my sleepless malady? To whom moan I can make and, peradventure, he * Shall pity eyes that sight of sleep can never see? The flea and bug suck up my blood, as wight that drinks * Wine from the proffering hand of fair virginity: Amid the lice my body aye remindeth me * Of orphan's good in Kázi's claw of villainy: My home's a sepulchre that measures cubits three, * Where pass I morn and eve in chained agony: My wines are tears, my clank of chains takes music's stead, * Cares my dessert of fruit and sorrows are my bed."
