The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, vol 8 - Sir Richard Francis Burton (best e reader for epub .TXT) 📗

every of the ten sons of merchants till they had made him drink a total of ten cups. Now Nur al-Din’s body was virgin of wine-bibbing, or never in all his life had he drunken vine-juice till that hour, wherefore its fumes wrought in his brain and drunkenness was stark upon him and he stood up (and indeed his tongue was thick and his speech stammering) and said, “O company, by Allah, ye are fair and your speech is goodly and your place pleasant; but there needeth hearing of sweet music; for drink without melody lacks the chief of its essentiality, even as saith the poet,

 

‘Pass round the cup to the old and the young man, too, And take the bowl from the hand of the shining moon,[FN#420]

But without music, I charge you, forbear to drink; I see even horses drink to a whistled tune.’”[FN#421]

 

Therewith up sprang the gardener lad and mounting one of the young men’s mules, was absent awhile, after which he returned with a Cairene girl, as she were a sheep’s tail, fat and delicate, or an ingot of pure silvern ore or a dinar on a porcelain plate or a gazelle in the wold forlore. She had a face that put to shame the shining sun and eyes Babylonian[FN#422] and brows like bows bended and cheeks rose-painted and teeth pearly-hued and lips sugared and glances languishing and breast ivory white and body slender and slight, full of folds and with dimples dight and hips like pillows stuffed and thighs like columns of Syrian stone, and between them what was something like a sachet of spices in wrapper swathed. Quoth the poet of her in these couplets,

 

“Had she shown her shape to idolaters’ sight, They would gaze on her face and their gods detest: And if in the East to a monk she’d show’d, He’d quit Eastern posture and bow to West.[FN#423]

An she crached in the sea and the briniest sea * Her lips would give it the sweetest zest.”

 

And quoth another in these couplets,

 

“Brighter than Moon at full with kohl’d eyes she came * Like Doe, on chasing whelps of Lioness intent: Her night of murky locks lets fall a tent on her A tent of hair[FN#424] that lacks no pegs to hold the tent; And roses lighting up her roseate cheeks are fed By hearts and livers flowing fire for languishment: An ‘spied her all the Age’s Fair to her they’d rise *

Humbly,[FN#425] and cry ‘The meed belongs to precedent!’”

 

And how well saith a third bard,[FN#426]

 

“Three things for ever hinder her to visit us, for fear Of the intriguing spy and eke the rancorous envier; Her forehead’s lustre and the sound of all her ornaments And the sweet scent her creases hold of ambergris and myrth.

Grant with the border of her sleeve she hide her brow and doff Her ornaments, how shall she do her scent away from her?”

 

She was like the moon when at fullest on its fourteenth night, and was clad in a garment of blue, with a veil of green, overbrown flower-white that all wits amazed and those of understanding amated.—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying his permitted say.

 

When it was the Eight Hundred and Sixty-seventh Night, She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that the gardener brought a girl whom we have described, possessed of the utmost beauty and loveliness and fine stature and symmetrical grace as it were she the poet signified when he said,[FN#427]

 

“She came apparelled in a vest of blue, That mocked the skies and shamed their azure hue; I thought thus clad she burst upon my sight, Like summer moonshine on a wintry night.”

 

And how goodly is the saying of another and how excellent, “She came thick veiled, and cried I, ‘O display * That face like full moon bright with pure-white ray.’

Quoth she, ‘I fear disgrace,’ quoth I, ‘Cut short * This talk, no shift of days thy thoughts affray.’

Whereat she raised her veil from fairest face * And crystal spray on gems began to stray:

And I forsooth was fain to kiss her cheek, * Lest she complain of me on Judgment-Day.

And at such tide before the Lord on High * We first of lovers were redress to pray:

So ‘Lord, prolong this reckoning and review’ * (Prayed I) ‘that longer I may sight my may.’”

 

Then said the young gardener to her, “Know thou, O lady of the fair, brighter than any constellation which illumineth air we sought, in bringing thee hither naught but that thou shouldst entertain with converse this comely youth, my lord Nur al-Din, for he hath come to this place only this day.” And the girl replied, “Would thou hadst told me, that I might have brought what I have with me!” Rejoined the gardener, “O my lady, I will go and fetch it to thee.” “As thou wilt,” said she: and he, “Give me a token.” So she gave him a kerchief and he fared forth in haste and returned after awhile, bearing a green satin bag with slings of gold. The girl took the bag from him and opening it shook it, whereupon there fell thereout two-and-thirty pieces of wood, which she fitted one into other, male into female and female into male[FN#428] till they became a polished lute of Indian workmanship. Then she uncovered her wrists and laying the lute in her lap, bent over it with the bending of mother over babe, and swept the strings with her fingertips; whereupon it moaned and resounded and after its olden home yearned; and it remembered the waters that gave it drink and the earth whence it sprang and wherein it grew and it minded the carpenters who made it their merchandise and the ships that shipped it; and it cried and called aloud and moaned and groaned; and it was as if she asked it of all these things and it answered her with the tongue of the case, reciting these couplets,[FN#429]

 

“A tree whilere was I the Bulbul’s home * To whom for love I bowed my grass-green head:

They moaned on me, and I their moaning learnt * And in that moan my secret all men read:

The woodman fell me falling sans offence, * And slender lute of me (as view ye) made:

But, when the fingers smite my strings, they tell * How man despite my patience did me dead;

Hence boon-companions when they hear my moan * Distracted wax as though by wine misled:

And the Lord softens every heart of me, * And I am hurried to the highmost stead:

All who in charms excel fain clasp my waist; * Gazelles of languid eyne and Houri maid:

Allah ne’er part fond lover from his joy * Nor live the loved one who unkindly fled.”

 

Then the girl was silent awhile, but presently taking the lute in lap, again bent over it, as mother bendeth over child, and preluded in many different modes; then, returning to the first, she sang these couplets,

 

“Would they [FN#430] the lover seek without ado, * He to his heavy grief had bid adieu:

With him had vied the Nightingale[FN#431] on bough * As one far parted from his lover’s view:

Rouse thee! awake! The Moon lights Union-night * As tho’ such Union woke the Morn anew.

This day the blamers take of us no heed * And lute-strings bid us all our joys ensue.

Seest not how four-fold things conjoin in one * Rose, myrtle, scents and blooms of golden hue.[FN#432]

Yea, here this day the four chief joys unite * Drink and dinars, beloved and lover true:

So win thy worldly joy, for joys go past * And naught but storied tales and legends last.”

 

When Nur al-Din heard the girl sing these lines he looked on her with eyes of love and could scarce contain himself for the violence of his inclination to her; and on like wise was it with her, because she glanced at the company who were present of the sons of the merchants and she saw that Nur al-Din was amongst the rest as moon among stars; for that he was sweet of speech and replete with amorous grace, perfect in stature and symmetry, brightness and loveliness, pure of all defect, than the breeze of morn softer, than Tasnim blander, as saith of him the poet,[FN#433]

 

“By his cheeks’ unfading damask and his smiling teeth I swear, By the arros that he feathers with the witchery of his air, By his sides so soft and tender and his glances bright and keen, By the whiteness of his forehead and the blackness of his hair,

By his arched imperious eyebrows, chasing slumber from my lids With their yeas and noes that hold me ‘twixt rejoicing and despair,

By the Scorpions that he launches from his ringlet-clustered brows, Seeking still to slay his lovers with his rigours unaware,

By the myrtle of his whiskers and the roses of his cheek, By his lips’ incarnate rubies and his teeth’s fine pearls and rare, By the straight and tender sapling of his shape, which for its fruit Doth the twin pomegranates, shining in his snowy bosom, wear,

By his heavy hips that tremble, both in motion and repose, And the slender waist above them, all too slight their weight to bear,

By the silk of his apparel and his quick and sprightly wit, By all attributes of beauty that are fallen to his share; Lo, the musk exhales its fragrance from his breath, and eke the breeze From his scent the perfume borrows, that it scatters everywhere.

Yea, the sun in all his splendour cannot with his brightness vie And the crescent moon’s a fragment that he from his nails doth pare.”

 

—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.

 

When it was the Eight Hundred and Sixty-eighth Night, She continued, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that Nur al-Din was delighted with the girl’s verses and he swayed from side to side for drunkenness and fell a-praising her and saying, “A lutanist to us inclined * And stole our wits bemused with wine:

And said to us her lute, ‘The Lord * Bade us discourse by voice divine.’”

 

When she heard him thus improvise the girl gazed at him with loving eyes and redoubled in passion and desire for him increased upon her, and indeed she marvelled at his beauty and loveliness, symmetry and grace, so that she could not contain herself, but took the lute in lap again and sang these couplets, “He blames me for casting on him my sight * And parts fro’ me bearing my life and sprite:

He repels me but kens what my heart endures * As though Allah himself had inspired the wight:

I portrayed his portrait in palm of hand * And cried to mine eyes, ‘Weep your doleful plight.’

For neither shall eyes of me spy his like * Nor my heart have patience to bear its blight:

Wherefore, will I tear thee from breast, O Heart * As one who regards him with jealous spite.

And when say I, ‘O heart be consoled for pine,’ * ‘Tis that heart to none other shall e’er incline:”

 

Nur al-Din wondered at the charms of her verse and the elegance of her expression and the sweetness of her voice and the eloquence of her speech and his wit fled for stress of love and longing, and ecstasy and distraction, so that he could not refrain from her a single moment, but bent to her and strained her to his bosom: and she in like manner bowed her form over