Now when it was the Eight Hundred and Sixty-fourth Night,
She continued, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when the sons of the merchants entered the vergier, they found therein all that soul desireth or eye charmeth, grapes of many hues grown, hanging in bunches or alone, even as saith of them the poet:—
Grapes tasting with the taste of wine ✿ Whose coats like blackest Raven’s shine: Their sheen, amid the leafage shows, ✿ Like women’s fingers henna’d fine.
Grape-bunches likest as they sway ✿ A-stalk, my body frail and snell: Honey and water thus in jar, ✿ When sourness past, make Hydromel.
Then they entered the arbour of the garden and saw there Rizwan the gate-keeper sitting, as he were Rizwan the Paradise-guardian, and on the door were written these lines:—
Garth Heaven-watered wherein clusters waved ✿ On boughs which full of sap to bend were fain: And, when the branches danced on Zephyr’s palm, ✿ The Pleiads shower’d as gifts[380] fresh pearls for rain.
And within the arbour were written these two couplets:—
Come with us, friend, and enter thou ✿ This garth that cleanses rust of grief: Over their skirts the Zephyrs trip[381] ✿ And flowers in sleeve to laugh are lief.[382]
So they entered and found all manner fruits in view and birds of every kind and hue, such as ring-dove, nightingale and curlew; and the turtle and the cushat sang their love lays on the sprays. Therein were rills that ran with limpid wave and flowers suave; and bloom for whose perfume we crave and it was even as saith of it the poet in these two couplets:—
The Zephyr breatheth o’er its branches, like ✿ Fair girls that trip as in fair skirts they pace: Its rills resemble swords in hands of knights ✿ Drawn from the scabbard and containing-case.[383]
The streamlet swings by branchy wood and aye ✿ Joys in its breast those beauties to display; And Zephyr noting this, for jealousy ✿ Hastens and bends the branches other way.
On the trees of the garden were all manner fruits, each in two sorts, and amongst them the pomegranate, as it were a ball of silver-dross,[384] whereof saith the poet and saith right well:—
Granados of finest skin, like the breasts ✿ Of maid firm-standing in sight of male; When I strip the skin, they at once display ✿ The rubies compelling all sense to quail.