"A Sage, I feel a fool before thy charms; * Distraught, I wot not what the words I say: If say I 'Sun,' away thou dost not pass * From eyes of me, while suns go down with day: Thou hast completed Beauty, in whose praise * Speech-makers fail, and talkers lose their way." Then the eunuch stationed Kamar al-Zaman behind the curtain of the Princess's door and the Prince said to him, "Which of the two ways will please thee more, treat and cure thy lady from here or go in and heal her within the curtain?" The eunuch marvelled at his words and answered, "An thou heal her from here it were better proof of thy skill." Upon this Kamar al-Zaman sat down behind the curtain and, taking out ink case, pen and paper, wrote the following: "This is the writ of one whom passion swayeth,* and whom longing waylayeth * and wakeful misery slayeth * one who despaireth of living * and looketh for naught but dying * with whose mourning heart * nor comforter nor helper taketh part * One whose sleepless eyes * none succoureth from anxieties * whose day is passed in fire * and his night in torturing desire * whose body is wasted for much emaciation * and no messenger from his beloved bringeth him consolation." And after this he indited the following couplets, "I write with heart devoted to thy thought, * And eyelids chafed by tears of blood they bled; And body clad, by loving pine and pain, * In shirt of leanness, and worn down to thread, To thee complain I of Love's tormentry, * Which ousted hapless Patience from her stead: A toi! show favour and some mercy deign, * For Passion's cruel hands my vitals shred." And beneath his lines he wrote these cadenced sentences, "The heart's pain is removed * by union with the beloved * and whomso his lover paineth * only Allah assaineth! * If we or you have wrought deceit * may the deceiver win defeat! * There is naught goodlier than a lover who keeps faith * with the beloved who works him scathe." Then, by way of subscription, he wrote, "From the distracted and despairing man * whom love and longing trepan * from the lover under passion's ban * the prisoner of transport and distraction * from this Kamar al-Zaman * son of Shahriman * to the peerless one * of the fair Houris the pearl-union * to the Lady Budur * daughter of King Al Ghayur * Know thou that by night I am sleepless * and by day in distress * consumed with increasing wasting and pain * and longing and love unfain * abounding in sighs * with tear flooded eyes * by passion captive ta'en * of Desire the slain * with heart seared by the parting of us twain * the debtor of longing bane, of sickness cup-companion * I am the sleepless one, who never closeth eye * the slave of love, whose tears run never dry * for the fire of my heart is still burning * and never hidden is the flame of my yearning." Then on the margin Kamar al-Zaman wrote this admired verse,