In the vestibules stood benches of ivory, plated with glittering gold and covered with silken stuffs, whereon lay men, whose skin had dried up on their bones; the fool had deemed them sleeping; but, for lack of food, they had perished and tasted the cup of death. Now when the Emir Musa saw this, he stood still, glorifying Allah the Most High and hallowing Him and contemplating the beauty of the palace and the massiveness of its masonry and fair perfection of its ordinance, for it was builded after the goodliest and stablest fashion and the most part of its adornment was of green[FN#139] lapis-lazuli, and on the inner door, which stood open, were written in characters of gold and ultramarine, these couplets, “Consider thou, O man, what these places to thee showed * And be upon thy guard ere thou travel the same road: And prepare thee good provision some day may serve thy turn * For each dweller in the house needs must yede wi’ those who yode Consider how this people their palaces adorned * And in dust have been pledged for the seed of acts they sowed They built but their building availed them not, and hoards * Nor saved their lives nor day of Destiny forslowed: How often did they hope for what things were undecreed. * And passed unto their tombs before Hope the bounty showed And from high and awful state all a sudden they were sent * To the straitness of the grave and oh! base is their abode: Then came to them a Crier after burial and cried, * What booted thrones or crowns or the gold to you bestowed: Where now are gone the faces hid by curtain and by veil, * Whose charms were told in proverbs, those beauties à-la-mode? The tombs aloud reply to the questioners and cry, * Death’s canker and decay those rosy cheeks corrode’ Long time they ate and drank, but their joyaunce had a term, * And the eater eke was eaten, and was eaten by the worm.” When the Emir read this, he wept, till he was like to swoon away—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say. When it was the Five Hundred ante Seventy-fifth Night,