Otbah1 and Rayya.
I went one year on the pilgrimage to the Holy House of Allah, and when I had accomplished my pilgrimage, I turned back for visitation of the tomb of the Prophet, whom Allah bless and keep! One night, as I sat in the garden,2 between the tomb and the pulpit, I heard a low moaning in a soft voice; so I listened to it and it said,
“Have the doves that moan in the lotus-tree
Woke grief in thy heart and bred misery?
Or doth memory of maiden in beauty deckt
Cause this doubt in thee, this despondency?
O night, thou art longsome for love-sick sprite
Complaining of Love and its ecstacy:
Thou makest him wakeful, who burns with fire
Of a love, like the live coal’s ardency.
The moon is witness my heart is held
By a moonlight brow of the brightest blee:
I reckt not to see me by Love ensnared
Till ensnared before I could reck or see.”
Then the voice ceased and not knowing whence it came to me I abode perplexed; but lo! it again took up its lament and recited,
“Came Rayya’s phantom to grieve thy sight
In the thickest gloom of the black-haired Night!
And hath love of slumber deprived those eyes
And the phantom-vision vexed thy sprite?
I cried to the Night, whose glooms were like
Seas that surge and billow with might, with might:
‘O Night, thou art longsome to lover who
Hath no aid nor help save the morning light!’
She replied, ‘Complain not that I am long:
’Tis love is the cause of thy longsome plight!’”
Now, at the first of the couplets, I sprang up and made for the quarter whence the sound came, nor had the voice ended repeating them, ere I was with the speaker and saw a youth of the utmost beauty, the hair of whose side face had not sprouted and in whose cheeks tears had worn twin tre
