“See how love mocks me! Will it make a joke of me and lead me to a place where hopes become sins and longings shame? Love, whom I have worshipped, has lifted up my heart to the Emir’s palace and brought down my station to a peasant’s hut. It has led my soul to a ravishing houri, to one surrounded by noblemen and guarded by an aristocrat’s honor. Love, I am obedient, but what would you have me do? Your paths led through the fire, and the flames scorched me. I opened my eyes, but I saw only darkness. I loosed my tongue, but I spoke only of grief. Longing has embraced me, O Love, with a spiritual hunger that can only be sated with the beloved’s kiss. I am weak, O Love, so why must you, who are strong, oppose me? Why do you wrong me when you are just and I am innocent? Why do you abase me when I have no other helper but you? Why do you forsake me, though you are my creator? If my blood has flowed in my veins against your will, then shed it! If my feet have walked any paths but yours, then make them wither! Do what you will with this body, but leave my soul to rejoice in safety in these fields beneath the shadow of your wings. The brooks flow to their lover, the sea, and the flowers smile at the object of their passion, the light. The mist rolls down to its beloved, the valley. And I? In me is what brooks do not know, what flowers do not hear, what the mist does not apprehend. You see me alone in my love, solitary in my yearning, far away from her. She does not want me even as a soldier in her father’s regiments, does not think me worthy to be a servant in her palace.”

The youth was silent for a moment, as though he sought to learn the language of the rippling river and the rustling leaves. Then once again he spoke: