LITMIR.BIZ

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strained her to him, and responded:

           My life was midnight on the mountain side;

            Cold stars were on the heights:

           There, in my darkness, I had lived and died,

            Content with nameless lights.

           Sudden I saw the heavens flush with a beam,

            And I ascended soon,

           And evermore over mankind supreme,

            Stood silver in the moon.

      And he fell playfully into a new metre, singing:

           Who will paint my beloved

            In musical word or colour?

           Earth with an envy is moved:

            Sea-shells and roses she brings,

            Gems from the green ocean-springs,

            Fruits with the fairy bloom-dews,

            Feathers of Paradise hues,

            Waters with jewel-bright falls,

            Ore from the Genii-halls:

           All in their splendour approved;

           All; but, match’d with my beloved,

            Darker, and denser, and duller.

      Then she kissed him for that song, and sang:

           Once to be beautiful was my pride,

            And I blush’d in love with my own bright brow:

           Once, when a wooer was by my side,

            I worshipp’d the object that had his vow:

           Different, different, different now,

            Different now is my beauty to me:

           Different, different, different now!

            For I prize it alone because prized by thee.

      Almeryl stretched his arm to the lattice, and drew it open, letting in the soft night wind, and the sound of the fountain and the bulbul and the beam of the stars, and versed to her in the languor of deep love:

           Whether we die or we live,

            Matters it now no more:

           Life has nought further to give:

            Love is its crown and its core.

           Come to us either, we’re rife,—

            Death or life!

           Death can take not away,

            Darkness and light are the same:

           We are beyond the pale ray,

            Wrapt in a rosier flame:

           Welcome which will to our breath;

            Life or death!

      So did these two lovers lute and sing in the stillness of the night, pouring into each other’s ears melodies from the new sea of fancy and feeling that flowed through them.

      Ere they ceased their sweet interchange of tenderness, which was but one speech from one soul, a glow of light ran up the sky, and the edge of a cloud was fired; and in the blooming of dawn Almeryl hung over Bhanavar, and his heart ached to see the freshness of her wondrous loveliness; and he sang, looking on her:

           The rose is living in her cheeks,

            The lily in her rounded chin;

           She speaks but when her whole soul speaks,

            And then the two flow out and in,

           And mix their red and white to make

            The hue for which I’d Paradise forsake.

           Her brow from her black falling hair

            Ascends like morn: her nose is clear

           As morning hills, and finely fair

            With pearly nostrils curving near

           The red bow of her upper lip;

            Her bosom’s the white wave beneath the ship.

           The fair full earth, the enraptured skies,

            She images in constant play:

           Night and the stars are in her eyes,

            But her sweet face is beaming day,

           A bounteous interblush of flowers:

            A dewy brilliance in a dale of bowers.

      Then he said, ‘And this morning shall our contract of marriage be written and witnessed?’

      She answered, ‘As my lord willeth; I am his.’

      Said he, ‘And it is thy desire?’

      She nestled to him and dinted his bare arm with the pearls of her mouth for a reply.

      So that morning their contract of marriage was written, and witnessed by the legal number of witnesses in the presence of the Cadi, with his license on it endorsed; and Bhanavar was the bride of Almeryl, he her husband. Never was youth blessed in a bride like that youth!

      Now, the twain lived together the circle of a full year of delightful marriage, and love lessened not in them, but was as the love of the first day. Little cared they, having each other, for the loneliness of their dwelling in that city, where they knew none save the porter Ukleet, who went about their commissions. Sometimes to amuse themselves with his drolleries, they sent for him, and were bountiful with him, and made him drink with them on the lawn of their garden leaning to an inlet of the sea; and then he would entertain them with all the scandal and gossip of the city, and its little folk and great. When he was outrageously extravagant in these stories of his, Bhanavar exclaimed, ‘Are such things, now? can it be true?’

      And he nodded in his conceit, and replied loftily, ‘‘Tis certain, O my Prince and Princess! ye be from the mountains, unused to the follies and dissipations of men where they herd; and ye know them not, men!’

      The lamps being lit in the garden to the edges of the water, where they lay one evening, Ukleet, who had been in his briskest mood, became grave, and put his forefinger to the side of his nose and began, ‘Hear ye aught of the great tidings? Wullahy! no other than the departure of the wife of Boolp, the broker, into darkness. ‘Tis of Boolp ye hire this house, and had ye a hundred houses in this city ye might have had them from Boolp the broker, he that’s rich; and glory to them whom Allah prospereth, say I! And I mention this matter, for ‘tis certain now Boolp will take another wife to him to comfort him, for there be two things beloved of Boolp, and therein manifesteth he taste and the discernment of excellence, and what is approved; and of these two things let the love of his hoards of the yellow-skinned treasure go first, and after that attachment to the silver-skinned of creation, the fair, the rapturous; even to them! So by this see ye not Boolp will yearn in his soul for another spouse? Now, O ye well-matched pair! what a chance were this, knew ye but a damsel of the mountains, exquisite in symmetry, a moon to enrapture the imagination of Boolp, and in the nature of things herit his possessions! for Boolp is an old man, even very old.’

      They laughed, and cried, ‘We know not of such a damsel, and the broker must go unmarried for us.’

      When next Ukleet sat before them, Almeryl took occasion to speak of Boolp again, and said, ‘This broker, O Ukleet, is he

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