“Pray’ee grant me some words from your lips, belike *
     Such mercy may comfort and cool these eyne: 
From the stress of my love and my pine for you, *
     I make light of what makes me despised, indign: 
Allah guard a folk whose abode was far, *
     And whose secret I kept in the holiest shrine: 
Now Fortune in kindness hath favoured me *
     Thrown on threshold dust of this love o’ mine: 
By me bedded I looked on Budur, whose sun *
     The moon of my fortunes hath made to shine.”

Then, having affixed his seal-ring to the missive, he wrote these couplets in the place of address,

“Ask of my writ what wrote my pen in dole, *
     And hear my tale of misery from this scroll;
My hand is writing while my tears down flow, *
     And to the paper ’plains my longing soul: 
My tears cease not to roll upon this sheet, *
     And if they stopped I’d cause blood-gouts to roll.”

And at the end he added this other verse,

“I’ve sent the ring from off thy finger bore *
     I when we met, now deign my ring restore!”

Then Kamar al-Zaman set the Lady Budur’s ring inside the letter and sealed it and gave it to the eunuch, who took it and went in with it to his mistress.—­And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.

          When it was the Two Hundred and Fifth Night,

She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that Kamar al-Zaman, after setting the seal-ring inside the epistle, gave it to the eunuch who took it and went in with it to his mistress; and, when the Lady Budur opened it, she found therein her own very ring.  Then she read the paper and when she understood its purport and knew that it was from her beloved, and that he in person stood behind the curtain, her reason began to fly and her breast swelled for joy and rose high; and she repeated these couplets,

“Long, long have I bewailed the sev’rance of our loves, *
     With tears that from my lids streamed down like burning
     rain;
And vowed that, if the days deign reunite us two, *
     My lips should never speak of severance again: 
Joy hath o’erwhelmed me so that, for the very stress *
     Of that which gladdens me to weeping I am fain. 
Tears are become to you a habit, O my eyes, *
     So that ye weep as well for gladness as for pain.’’[FN#301]

And having finished her verse, the Lady Budur stood up forthwith and, firmly setting her feet to the wall, strained with all her might upon the collar of iron, till she brake it from her neck and snapped the chains.  Then going forth from behind the curtain she threw herself on Kamar al-Zaman and kissed him on the mouth, like a pigeon feeding its young.[FN#302] And she embraced him with all the stress of her love and longing and said to him, “O my lord do I wake or sleep and hath the Almighty indeed vouchsafe] us reunion after