aw, four months and ten days must
elapse before a widow can marry again.

* * * * *

Possibly, readers of a sentimental turn--oft inclined to the "melting"
mood--may experience a kind of pleasing sadness in perusing a rhythmical
prose translation of the passage in Nizami's poem in which

_Majnun bewails the Death of Layla._

When Zayd,[122] with heart afflicted, heard that in the silent tomb that
moon[123] had set, he wept and mourned, and sadly flowed his tears. Who
in this world is free from grief and tears? Then, clothed in sable
garments, like one oppressed who seeks redress, he, agitated, and
weeping like a vernal cloud, hastened to the grave of Layla; but, as he
o'er it hung, ask not how swelled his soul with grief; while from his
eyes the tears of blood incessant flowed, and from his sight and groans
the people fled. Sometimes he mourned with grief so deep and sad that
from his woe the sky became obscure. Then from the tomb of that fair
flower he to the desert took his way. There sought the wanderer from the
paths of man him whose night was now in darkness veiled, as that bright
lamp was gone; and, seated near him, weeping and sighing, he beat his
breast and struck upon the earth his head. When Majnun saw him thus
afflicted he said: "What has befallen thee, my brother, that thy soul is
thus overpowered? and why so pale that cheek? and why these sable
robes?" He thus replied: "Because that fortune now has changed: a sable
stream has issued from the earth, and even death has burst its iron
gates; a storm of hail has on the garden poured, and not a leaf of all
our rose-bower now remains. The moon has fallen from the firmament, and
prostrate on the mead that waving cypress lies! Layla was, but from the
world has now departed; and from the wound thy love had caused she
died."

[122] An attendant, who had always befriended Majnun.

[123] "The moon," to wit, the unhappy Layla. See the note,
p. 284.

Scarce had these accents reached his listening ear e'er, senseless,
Majnun fell as one by lightning struck. A short time, fainting, thus he
lay; recovered, then he raised his head to heaven and thus exclaimed: "O
merciless! what fate severe is this on one so helpless? Why such wrath?
Why blast a blade of grass with lightning, and on the ant [i.e. himself]
thy power exert? One ant and a thousand pains of hell, when one single
spark would be enough! Why thus with blo