on.

This was Bhanavar the Beautiful.

Now, the damsel was betrothed to the son of a neighbouring Emir, a youth
comely, well-fashioned, skilled with the bow, apt in all exercises; one
that sat his mare firm as the trained falcon that fixeth on the plunging
bull of the plains; fair and terrible in combat as the lightning that
strideth the rolling storm; and it is sung by the poet:

When on his desert mare I see
My prince of men,
I think him then
As high above humanity
As he shines radiant over me.

Lo! like a torrent he doth bound,
Breasting the shock
From rock to rock:
A pillar of storm, he shakes the ground,

His turban on his temples wound.

Match me for worth to be adored
A youth like him
In heart and limb!
Swift as his anger is his sword;
Softer than woman his true word.

Now, the love of this youth for the damsel Bhanavar was a consuming
passion, and the father of the damsel and the father of the youth looked
fairly on the prospect of their union, which was near, and was plighted
as the union of the two tribes. So they met, and there was no voice
against their meeting, and all the love that was in them they were free
to pour forth far from the hearing of men, even where they would. Before
the rising of the sun, and ere his setting, the youth rode swiftly from
the green tents of the Emir his father, to waylay her by the waters of
the lake; and Bhanavar was there, bending over the lake, her image in the
lake glowing like the fair fulness of the moon; and the youth leaned to
her from his steed, and sang to her verses of her great loveliness ere
she was wistful of him. Then she turned to him, and laughed lightly a
welcome of sweetness, and shook the falls of her hair across the blushes
of her face and her bosom; and he folded her to him, and those two would
fondle together in the fashion of the betrothed ones (the blessing of
Allah be on them all!), gazing on each other till their eyes swam with
tears, and they were nigh swooning with the fulness of their bliss.
Surely 'twas an innocent and tender dalliance, and their prattle was that
of lovers till the time of parting, he showing her how she looked
best--she him; and they were forgetful of all else that is, in their
sweet interchange of flatteries; and the world was a wilderness to them
both when the youth parted with Bhanavar by the brook which bounded the
tents