"She came thick veiled, and cried I, 'O display * That face like full moon bright with pure-white ray.' Quoth she, 'I fear disgrace,' quoth I, 'Cut short * This talk, no shift of days thy thoughts affray.' Whereat she raised her veil from fairest face * And crystal spray on gems began to stray: And I forsooth was fain to kiss her cheek, * Lest she complain of me on Judgment-Day. And at such tide before the Lord on High * We first of lovers were redress to pray: So 'Lord, prolong this reckoning and review' * (Prayed I) 'that longer I may sight my may.'" Then said the young gardener to her, "Know thou, O lady of the fair, brighter than any constellation which illumineth air we sought, in bringing thee hither naught but that thou shouldst entertain with converse this comely youth, my lord Nur al-Din, for he hath come to this place only this day." And the girl replied, "Would thou hadst told me, that I might have brought what I have with me!" Rejoined the gardener, "O my lady, I will go and fetch it to thee." "As thou wilt," said she: and he, "Give me a token." So she gave him a kerchief and he fared forth in haste and returned after awhile, bearing a green satin bag with slings of gold. The girl took the bag from him and opening it shook it, whereupon there fell thereout two-and-thirty pieces of wood, which she fitted one into other, male into female and female into male[FN#428] till they became a polished lute of Indian workmanship. Then she uncovered her wrists and laying the lute in her lap, bent over it with the bending of mother over babe, and swept the strings with her finger-tips; whereupon it moaned and resounded and after its olden home yearned; and it remembered the waters that gave it drink and the earth whence it sprang and wherein it grew and it minded the carpenters who cut it and the polishers who polished it and the merchants who made it their merchandise and the ships that shipped it; and it cried and called aloud and moaned and groaned; and it was as if she asked it of all these things and it answered her with the tongue of the case, reciting these couplets,[FN#429] "A tree whilere was I the Bulbul's home * To whom for love I bowed my grass-green head: They moaned on me, and I their moaning learnt * And in that moan my secret all men read: The woodman felled me falling sans offence, * And slender lute of me (as view ye) made: But, when the fingers smite my strings, they tell * How man despite my patience did me dead; Hence boon-companions when they hear my moan * Distracted wax as though by wine misled: And the Lord softens every heart to me, * And I am hurried to the highmost stead: All who in charms excel fain clasp my waist; * Gazelles of languid eyne and Houri maid: Allah ne'er part fond lover from his joy * Nor live the loved one who unkindly fled."