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saw this, the tears streamed from his eyes and he wept and sighed and lamented; sobs rose from his bosom and he repeated the following verses:
By the witching amorous sweetness and the blackness of thine eyes, By the tender flexile softness in thy slender waist that lies,
By the graces and the languor of thy body and thy shape, By the fount of wine and honey from thy coral lips that rise,
O my hope, to see thine image in my dreams were sweeter far Than were safety to the fearful, languishing in woful wise!
Then he opened his bales and displayed their contents to Taj el Mulouk, piece by piece, till he came to a mantle of satin brocaded with gold, worth two thousand dinars from which, when he opened it, there fell a piece of linen. As soon as he saw this, he caught up the piece of linen in haste and hid it under his thigh; and indeed he seemed as though he had lost his reason, and he repeated the following verses:
When shall my sad tormented heart be healed, alas, of thee? The Pleiades were nearer far than is thy grace to me.
Distance estrangement, longing pain and fire of love laid waste, Procrastination and delay, in these my life doth flee.
For no attainment bids me live nor exile slays me quite, Travel no nigher doth me bring, nor wilt thou nearer be.
There is no justice to be had of thee nor any ruth In thee; no winning to thy grace and yet no breaking free.
Alack, for love of thee, the ways are straitened all on me; So that I know not where I go nor any issue see!
The prince wondered greatly at his behaviour, and said to him, ‘What is that piece of linen?’ ‘O my lord,’ replied the merchant, ‘thou hast no concern with it.’ ‘Show it me,’ said the prince; and the merchant answered, ‘O my lord, it was on account of this piece of linen that I refused to show thee my goods; Night cxii.for I cannot let thee look on it.’ But Taj el Mulouk rejoined, ‘I must and will see it;’ and insisted and became angry. So he
