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 myrrh. 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, over brow flower-white that all wits amazed and those of understanding amated.—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her 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,