what I endured, but thou must depart from my home? After thee I care not for food nor joy in sleep, and naught but tears and mourning are left me. O my son, from what land shall I call thee? And what town hath given thee refuge?" Then her sobs burst out, and she began repeating these couplets,
"Well learnt we, since you left, our grief and sorrow to sustain, * While bows of severance shot their shafts in many a railing rain: They left me, after girthing on their selles of corduwayne * To fight the very pangs of death while spanned they sandy plain: Mysterious through the nightly gloom there came the moan of dove; * A ring dove, and replied I, 'Cease thy plaint, how durst complain?' If, by my life, her heart, like mine, were full of pain and pine * She had not decks her neck with ring nor sole with ruddy stain. [1] Fled is mine own familiar friend, bequeathing me a store * Of parting pang and absence ache to suffer evermore."
Then she abstained from food and drink and gave herself up to excessive tear shedding and lamentation. Her grief became public property far and wide and all the people of the town and country side wept with her and cried, "Where is thine eye, O Zau al-Makan?" And they bewailed the rigours of Time, saying, "Would Heaven we knew what hath befallen Kanmakan that he fled his native town, and chased himself from the place where his father used to fill all in hungry case and do justice and grace?" And his mother redoubled her weeping and wailing till the news of Kanmakan's departure came to King Sasan.--And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say.
When it was the One Hundred and Fortieth Night,
She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that came to King Sasan the tidings of the departure of Kanmakan, through the Chief Emirs who said to him, "Verily he is the son of our Sovran and the seed of King Omar bin al-Nu'uman and it hath reached us that he hath exiled himself from the land." When King Sasan heard these words, he was wroth with them and ordered one of them to be hanged by way of silencing him, whereat the fear of him fell upon the hearts of all the other Grandees and they dared not
- ↑ In times of mourning Moslem women do not use perfumes or dyes, like the Henna here alluded to in the pink legs and feet of the dove.
