"When she's incensed thou seest folk like slain, * And when she's pleased, their souls are quick again: Her eyne are armed with glances magical * Wherewith she kills and quickens as she's fain. The Worlds she leadeth captive with her eyes * As tho' the Worlds were all her slavish train." Quoth the Lady Zubaydah, "Well come, and welcome and fair cheer to thee, O Kut al-Kulub! Sit and divert us with thine art and the goodliness of thine accomplishments." Quoth the damsel, "I hear and I obey"; and, putting out her hand, took the tambourine, whereof one of its praisers speaketh in the following verses, "Ho thou o' the tabret, my heart takes flight * And love-smit cries while thy fingers smite! Thou takest naught but a wounded heart, * The while for acceptance longs the wight: So say thou word or heavy or light; * Play whate'er thou please it will charm the sprite. Sois bonne, unveil thy cheek, ma belle * Rise, deftly dance and all hearts delight." Then she smote the tambourine briskly and so sang thereto, that she stopped the birds in the sky and the place danced with them blithely; after which she laid down the tambourine and took the pipe [FN#231] whereof it is said, "She hath eyes whose babes wi' their fingers sign * To sweet tunes without a discordant line." And as the poet also said in this couplet, "And, when she announceth the will to sing, * For Union-joy 'tis a time divine!" Then she laid down the pipe, after she had charmed therewith all who were present, and took up the lute, whereof saith the poet, "How many a blooming bough in glee-girl's hand is fain * as lute to 'witch great souls by charm of cunning strain! She sweeps tormenting lute strings by her artful touch * Wi' finger-tips that surely chain with endless chain." Then she tightened its pegs and tuned its strings and laying it in her lap, bended over it as mother bendeth over child; and it seemed as it were of her and her lute that the poet spoke in these couplets, "Sweetly discourses she on Persian string * And Unintelligence makes understand. And teaches she that Love's a murtherer, * Who oft the reasoning Moslem hath unmann'd. A maid, by Allah, in whose palm a thing * Of painted wood like mouth can speech command. With lute she stauncheth flow of Love; and so * Stops flow of blood the cunning leach's hand." Then she preluded in fourteen different modes and sang to the lute an entire piece, so as to confound the gazers and delight her hearers. After which she recited these two couplets, "The coming unto thee is blest: * Therein new joys for aye attend: Its blisses are continuous * Its blessings never end." —And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say. When it was the Eight Hundred and Fortieth Night,