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what thinkest thou I shall find joy! I would slay myself but that I doubt it would displease thee, but it would grieve thee to hear I was no longer living.[1] Come (then) and let us living give our eyes to the shedding of tears."[2]

816. He said: "O sun, who art said to be the image of the sunny night of Him who is One in unity of being and Everlasting, whom the heavenly bodies obey to the jot[3] of a second, turn not away my good fortune; hear my prayer till our meeting, mine and hers!

817. "Thou whom former philosophers addressed as the image of God,[4] aid me, for I am become a captive, iron chains bind me! I, seeker of crystal and ruby, have lost coral[5] and glass; formerly I could not endure nearness, now I regret absence."

818. Thus he lamented and cried out; like a candle he melted. The fear of being too late made him hasten; he wandered on. When night fell, he found delight in the rising of the stars; he compared them to her, he rejoiced, he gazed on them, he held converse with them.

819. He says to the moon: "I adjure thee in the name of thy God, thou art the giver of the plague of love to lovers; thou hast the balm of patience to make them bear it; hear my prayer to unite me with the face fair, through thee, like thine own."[6]

820. Night rejoiced him, day tortured him, he awaited the sunset. When he saw a stream he dismounted; he gazed on the rippling of the water, with it he united the rivulet of blood from the lake of tears; again he set out, he hasted onward on his road.

821. Alone he lamented; he who was like the aloe-tree in form wept. He killed a goat in the plain[7] where he came to a rocky place, roasted and ate of it and went on, sun-

  1. Suicide, 728, 854, 1169.
  2. Ch. here inserts a quatrain (No. 829).
  3. Iota.
  4. Ch. says the reference is to Phil. ii. 6 (?); invocation to sun, 935, 937.
  5. Sat'hi. Abul. and Car. give gisheri as the equivalent; ? the passage means: "I have lost my ruddy hue and the radiance of my countenance"; 990.
  6. M., xii. 33.
  7. Mindori, open country, not necessarily flat.