Section VI

Lailí in beauty, softness, grace,Surpassed the loveliest of her race;She was a fresh and odorous flower,Plucked by a fairy from her bower;With heart-delighting rosebuds blooming,The welcome breeze of spring perfuming.The killing witchery that liesIn her soft, black, delicious eyes,When gathered in one amorous glance,Pierces the heart like sword or lance;The prey that falls into her snare,For life must mourn and struggle there;Her eyelash speaks a thousand blisses,Her lips of ruby ask for kisses;Soft lips where sugar-sweetness dwells,Sweet as the bee-hive's honey-cells;Her cheeks, so beautiful and bright,Had stole the moon's refulgent light;Her form the cypress-tree expresses,And full and ripe invites caresses.With all these charms the heart to win,There was a cureless grief within—Yet none beheld her grief, or heard;She drooped like broken-winged bird.'Her secret thoughts her love concealing,But, softly to the terrace stealing,From morn to eve she gazed around,In hopes her Majnún might be found,Wandering in sight. For she had noneTo sympathise with her—not one!None to compassionate her woes—In dread of rivals, friends, and foes;And though she smiled, her mind's distressFilled all her thoughts with bitterness;The fire of absence on them preyed,But light nor smoke that fire betrayed;Shut up within herself, she sate,Absorbed in grief, disconsolate;Yet true love has resources still,Its soothing arts, and ever will!Voices in guarded softness roseUpon her ever-listening ear;She heard her constant lover's woes,In melting strains, repeated near;

The sky, with gloomy clouds o'erspread,At length soft showers began to shed;And what, before, destruction seemed,With rays of better promise gleamed.

Voices of young and old she heardBeneath the harem-walls recitingHer Majnún's songs; each thrilling wordHer almost broken heart delighting.

Lailí, with matchless charms of face,Was blessed with equal mental grace;With eloquence and taste refined;And from the treasures of her mindShe poured her fondest love's confessionWith faithful love's most warm expression;Told all her hopes and sorrows o'er,Though told a thousand times before:The life-blood circling through her veinsRecorded her affecting strains;And as she wrote, with passion flushed,The glowing words with crimson blushed.And now the terrace she ascendsIn secret, o'er the rampart bends,And flings the record, with a sigh,To one that moment passing by:Unmarked the stranger gains the prize,And from the spot like lightning fliesTo where the lingering lover weeps unseen.—Starting upon his feet, with cheerful mien,He gazes, reads, devours the pleasing tale,And joy again illumes his features pale.

Thus was resumed the soft exchange of thought;Thus the return of tenderest feeling wrought:Each the same secret intercourse pursued,And mutual vows more ardently renewed;And many a time between them went and cameThe fondest tokens of their deathless flame;Now in hope's heaven, now in despair's abyss,And now enrapt in visionary bliss.