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142 THE TARJUMAK AE-ASKWAQ (LV, LVl)

imagined; and tlie remedy is a second disease of
passion,
3. Because I behold a form whose beauty, as often as we
meet, grows in splendour and majesty.
4. Hence there is no escape from a passion that increases
in coiTe.spondence with every inci’ease in his loveli-
ne.ss according to a predestined scale.

C o m m e n t a r y
1-4. He is continually torment6d, for in the anguish of
absence he hopes to be cured by meeting his Beloved, but the
meeting only adds to his pain, because he is always*moving
from a lower state to a higher, and the latter inevitably
produces in him a more intense passion than the former did.

LVI
1. (My goal is) the corniced palace of Baghdad, not the
corniced palace of Sindad,’
2. The city .set like a crown above the gardens, as though
she were a bride who has been unveiled in the most
fragrant chamber.
3. The' wind plays with the branches and they are bent, and
’tis as though the twain had plighted troth Avith one
another.
4. Meseems, Tigris is the string of pearls on "her neck, and
her spou.se is our lord, the Imiim who guides aright,
5. He who gives victory and is made victorious, the best of
6. God bless him ! as long as a ringdove pei’ched on a
Caliphs, who in war does not mount on horseback.

swaying bough shall moan for him,
7. And likewise as long as the lightnings shall flash of

^ The second hem istich of this verse is borrow ed from the verses of

al-Asw ad b. Ya,‘luc (Miifnijijafh/ydi, ed. b y Thorbecke, p. .T2, 8- 9 ; Bakri,
ed. by W iistenfeld, lO j) :

Sindad was a palace of IHra.