Vis and Ramin

306 VISBAMIANI
"Why does the devil of impatience thus overcome thee?'
Vis quivered like the sun in a clear stream. She said to
the nurse :
"Who has seen or who has heard of love like unto my
love ? Nothing more wonderful than this night has ever
844 [ befallen me. A thousand times my life has come to my
lips, and I burn, as it were, in a stony river bed among
thorns, so seems my couch to me. My melancholy fate,
1
black as night, is like an Ethiop king seated on an elephant,
and Eamin is the enlightener of my fate. The blackness
of my night will be dispersed when the moon of my luck
shows his face. Now in a dream I have seen his face, the
sun-like, the fragrant world, and by his sweet savour he
perfumed the earth. He took me by the hand and spoke to
me with his jacinth-coloured lips and his pleasant tongue.
Thus he spoke :
'
I am come to greet thee secretly, for I
fear thy foes. I have not come openly because they hide
thee from me, and guard thee, as they guard (their) soul
from mischance. 2 Do somewhat for me who am so forgone
for the sake of thee ! Show
me thy face in mercy, and
be no longer wroth with me. Embrace
after thy wont, amber me with thy hair,
me pleasantly
and make me
immortal with the kisses of thy lips. Soften thy heart and
look not surlily on me it beseems not thy beauty ; tender-
ness to me becomes thee better.' I saw these pleasures in
a dream, and I heard such words from him, and now in
reality I am so far from him. I have not seen him for such
a long time. Now why, why, was I so impatient? Why,
why, was I so sad and oppressed ? As long as my fate
separates me from the ravisher of my heart I shall be so
sad and impatient that I shall be forgiven by all."
1 PtZo, 238, 382.
2 Var., " as they guard a madman from accident."