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O culver of the copse, may peace upon thee light, O friend of all who love and every wistful wight!
I love a young gazelle, a slender one, whose glance Than sharpest sabre’s point is keener and more bright.
For love of her, my heart and entrails are a-fire And sicknesses consume my body and my spright.
The sweet of pleasant food’s forbidden unto me, And eke I am denied the taste of sleep’s delight.
Solace and fortitude have taken flight from me, And love and longing lodge with me, both day and night.
How shall my life be sweet to me, while she’s afar, That is my life, my wish, the apple of my sight?
Night ccclxxvii When the pigeon heard these verses, it awoke from its brooding and cooed and warbled and trilled, till it all but spoke; and the tongue of the case interpreted for it and recited the following verses:
O lover, thy wailings recall to my mind The time when my youth from me wasted and dwined,
And a mistress, whose charms and whose grace I adored, Seductive and fair over all of her kind;
Whose voice, from the twigs of the sandhill upraised, Left the strains of the flute, to my thought, far behind.
A snare set the fowler and caught me, who cried, “Would he d leave me to range at my will on the wind!”
I had hoped he was clement or seeing that I Was a lover, would pity my lot and be kind;
But no, (may God smite him!) he tore me away From my dear and apart from her harshly confined.
Since then, my desire for her grows without cease, And my heart with the fires of disjunction is mined.
God guard a true lover, who striveth with love And hath suffered the torments in which I have pined!
When he seeth me languish for love in my cage, He will loose me, in mercy, my loved one to find
Then Uns el Wujoud turned to his friend, the Ispahani and said to him, ‘What palace is this? Who built it and who abideth in it?’ Quoth the eunuch, ‘The Vizier of King Shamikh built it for his daughter, fearing for
