Wilt thou not
rise, O my son, and pass into the garden and take thy pleasure
therein and gladden thy heart?' 'O my lord,' said Noureddin, 'to
whom does the garden belong?' And he replied, 'O my son, I
inherited it from my family.' Now his object in saying this was
to put them at their ease and induce them to enter the garden. So
Noureddin thanked him and rose, he and the damsel, and followed
him into the garden. They entered through a gateway, vaulted like
a gallery and overhung with vines bearing grapes of various
colours, the red like rubies and the black like ebony, and
passing under a bower of trellised boughs, found themselves in a
garden, and what a garden! There were fruit-trees growing singly
and in clusters and birds warbling melodiously on the branches,
whilst the thousand-voiced nightingale repeated the various
strains: the turtle-dove filled the place with her cooing, and
there sang the blackbird, with its warble like a human voice, and
the ring-dove, with her notes like a drinker exhilarated with
wine. The trees were laden with all manner of ripe fruits, two of
each: the apricot in its various kinds, camphor and almond and
that of Khorassan, the plum, whose colour is as that of fair
women, the cherry, that does away discoloration of the teeth, and
the fig of three colours, red and white and green. There bloomed
the flower of the bitter orange, as it were pearls and coral,
the rose whose redness puts to shame the cheeks of the fair,
the violet, like sulphur on fire by night, the myrtle, the
gillyflower, the lavender, the peony and the blood-red anemone.
Pages:
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456