Let Fortune have her wanton way * Take heart and all her words obey:
Nor joy nor mourn at anything * For all things pass and no things stay.
Now when I knocked out the Wazir's eye he could not say a single word,
for that my father was King of the city; but he hated me ever after and
dire was the grudge thus caused between us twain. So when I was set
before him hand bound and pinioned, he straightway gave orders for me
to be beheaded. I asked, "For what crime wilt thou put me to death?";
whereupon he answered, "What crime is greater than this?" pointing the
while to the place where his eye had been Quoth I, "This I did by
accident not of malice prepense;" and quoth he, “If thou didst it by
accident, I will do the like by thee with intention.”[FN#195] Then
cried he, "Bring him forward," and they brought me up to him, when he
thrust his finger into my left eye and gouged it out; whereupon I
became one eyed as ye see me. Then he bade bind me hand and foot, and
put me into a chest and said to the sworder, "Take charge of this
fellow, and go off with him to the waste lands about the city; then
draw thy scymitar and slay him, and leave him to feed the beasts and
birds." So the headsman fared forth with me and when he was in the
midst of the desert, he took me out of the chest (and I with both hands
pinioned and both feet fettered) and was about to bandage my eyes
before striking off my head. But I wept with exceeding weeping until I
made him weep with me and, looking at him I began to recite these
couplets:—
"I deemed you coat o' mail that should withstand * The foeman's shafts,
and you proved foeman's brand
I hoped your aidance in mine every chance * Though fail my left to aid
my dexter hand:
Aloof you stand and hear the railer's gibe * While rain their shafts on
me the giber-band:
But an ye will not guard me from my foes * Stand clear, and succour
neither these nor those!"