The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 08 (of 10)
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The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 08 (of 10)
Fairy tales; Tales -- Arab countries
And the lime sweet of scent, which resembleth a hen's egg, but its
yellowness ornamenteth its ripe fruit, and its fragrance hearteneth him
who plucketh it, as saith the poet who singeth it,
"Seest not the Lemon, when it taketh form, * Catch rays of light
and all to gaze constrain;
Like egg of pullet which the huckster's hand * Adorneth dyeing
with the saffron-stain?"
Moreover in this garden were all manner of other fruits and
sweet-scented herbs and plants and fragrant flowers, such as jessamine
and henna and water-lilies[FN#407] and spikenard[FN#408] and roses of
every kind and plantain[FN#409] and myrtle and so forth; and indeed it
was without compare, seeming as it were a piece of Paradise to whoso
beheld it. If a sick man entered it, he came forth from it like a
raging lion, and tongue availeth not to its description, by reason of
that which was therein of wonders and rarities which are not found but
in Heaven: and how should it be otherwise when its doorkeeper's name
was Rizwan? Though widely different were the stations of those twain!
Now when the sons of the merchants had walked about gazing at the
garden after taking their pleasure therein, they say down in one of its
pavilions and seated Nur al-Din in their midst.—And Shahrazad perceived
the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.
When it was the Eight Hundred and Sixty-sixth Night,
She resume, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when the sons
of the merchants sat down in the pavilion they seated Nur al-Din in
their midst on a rug of gold-purfled leather of Al-Táif,[FN#410]
leaning on a pillow[FN#411] of minever, stuffed with ostrich down. And
they gave him a fan of ostrich feathers, whereon were written these two
couplets,
"A fan whose breath is fraught with fragrant scent; * Minding of
happy days and times forspent,
Wafting at every time its perfumed air * O'er face of noble youth
on honour bent."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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