’Twas night, when in the azure sky above The stars as sleeping closed their sparkling eyes, When friends and foes alike in slumber lay, Yet, at the music of the Nightingale, Awoke, for Bulbul then all sleepless sate And uttered to the world his dolorous chant, While thinking on the beauty of the Rose. For vivid passion wakened in his heart, And with his sad and melancholy voice He ’gan to mourn above his well-beloved. And thinking on his melancholy plight, And on his desolation all forlorn, He thus began his sad and mournful lay: “O queen who dwellest in a careless realm, O thou who art the moon of beauty’s heaven, Half of all beauty’s bloom belongs to thee; Thou the Rose-bloom of beauty’s paradise, Oh, listen to the message that I bring, As I begin to utter my lament. For love of thee I sicken to my death; And all my understanding fails in me; Some secret pang my patience has destroyed, I am distraught in this fair world of thine, My fettered heart is struggling in a snare, And all my soul is manacled in woe. And through the dolor of my dazzled sight, I am as faint as is the new-born moon. Some power, as in the chase, my spirit hunts; E’en now the gleaming knife is at my heart. For, oh! the beauty of thy cheek has cast Fire in the dreary dwelling of my mind; And all the perilous lustre of thine eye, Like a sharp sword, is levelled against me. My suffering has cleft my heart in twain, And in dire desolation ruined me. I melt to nothing in the grief of love, And plunge deep buried in a flood of woe; For I am overcome with passion’s wound, My inmost being heaves in pain and blood; I am consumed, and absence tortures me. And like a mote I hover in desire. My love pain burns me like a heated iron, My eye is like a beaker filled with wine; Oh, help me, for endurance can no more; Oh, spare me further buffets of disdain. My strength is all unequal to this load, And all my feebleness is free from guilt. O slender Rose, and wilt thou that thy bird Should still descant of absence and neglect With thorn-pierced bosom ever hid from thee? Now beauty in the lightest slumber lies, And deeper sorrow checks my prayers to thee. O Rose, beware thou of the gale of sighs, For, like the morning wind, it mars the Rose. On this distracted heart some pity take, Be merciful and heal me of my pain.” So sang the silver-throated nightingale, So sang he, with his soul aflame in love. But there was naught that noted or allayed His pain, and tears were still his sole relief. No one gave heed to his sad cantilene, And no one knew the meaning of his woe. To him the world in utter darkness lay, He was encompassed by a trackless maze, On one side were the shadows of the night, And on the other was the force of fate.