would fain hear it again and know her to whom it belongeth. So, an thou deem right to vouchsafe us this favour, it will be of the generosity of thy nature, and after we will return whence we came." Quoth the host, "Ye are welcome;" and, turning to a black slave-girl, said to her, "Fetch me thy mistress such an one." So she went away and returning with a chair of chinaware, cushioned with brocade, set it down: then withdrew again and presently returned with a damsel, as she were the moon on the night of its full, who sat down on the chair. Then the black girl gave her a bag of satin wherefrom she brought out a lute, inlaid with gems and jacinths and furnished with pegs of gold.—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say. When it was the Nine Hundred and Forty-eighth Night, She continued, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when the damsel came forward, she took her seat upon the chair and brought out from its case a lute and behold, it was inlaid with gems and jacinths and furnished with pegs of gold. Then she tuned its strings, even as saith the poet of her and her lute in these lines, "She sits it in lap like a mother fond * And she strikes the strings that can make it speak: And ne'er smiteth her right an injurious touch * But her left repairs of her right the wreak.[FN#282]" Then she strained the lute to her bosom, bending over it as mother bendeth over babe, and swept the strings which complained as child to mother complaineth; after which she played upon it and began improvisng these couplets, "An Time my lover restore me I'll blame him fain, * Saying, 'Pass, O my dear, the bowl and in passing drain The wine which hath never mixed with the heart of man * But he passes to joy from annoy and to pleasure from pain.' Then Zephyr arose to his task of sustaining the cup: * Didst e'er see full Moon that in hand the star hath ta'en?[FN#283] How oft I talked thro' the night, when its rounded Lune * Shed on darkness of Tigris' bank a beamy rain! And when Luna sank in the West 'twas as though she'd wave * O'er the length of the watery waste a gilded glaive."