The Commander of the Faithful Harun Al-Rashid was exceeding restless
one night and rising from his bed, paced from chamber to chamber, but
could not compose himself to sleep. As soon as it was day, he said,
“Fetch me Al-Asma’i!”[FN#114] So the eunuch went out and told the
doorkeepers; these sent for the poet and when he came, informed the
Caliph who bade admit him and said to him, “O Asma’i, I wish thee to
tell me the best thou hast heard of stories of women and their verses.”
Answered Al-Asma’i, “Hearkening and obedience! I have heard great store
of women’s verses; but none pleased me save three sets of couplets I
once heard from three girls.”——And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day
and ceased saying her permitted say.
When it was the Six Hundred and Eighty-seventh Night,
She pursued, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that Al-Asma’i
said to the Prince of True Believers, “Verily I have heard much, but
nothing pleased me save three sets of couplets improvised by as many
girls.” Quoth the Caliph, “Tell me of them,” and quoth he, “Know then,
O Commander of the Faithful, that I once abode in Bassorah, and one
day, as I was walking, the heat was sore upon me and I sought for a
siesta-place but found none. However by looking right and left I came
upon a porch swept and sprinkled, at the upper end whereof was a wooden
bench under an open lattice-window, whence exhaled a scent of musk. I
entered the porch and sitting down on the bench, would have stretcht me
at full length when I heard from within a girl’s sweet voice talking
and saying:—O my sisters, we are here seated to spend our day in
friendly converse; so come, let us each put down an hundred dinars and
recite a line of verse; and whoso extemporiseth the goodliest and
sweetest line, the three hundred dinars shall be hers.” “With love and
gladness,” said the others; and the eldest recited the first couplet
which is this:—
Would he come to my bed during sleep ’twere delight * But a visit on
wake were delightsomer sight!