rs of the Koran to read by the tomb;
and then she stole to the tomb hourly, in the day and in the night,
wailing of him and her utter misery, repeating verses at the side of the
tomb, and they were,

Take me to thee!
Like the deep-rooted tree,
My life is half in earth, and draws
Thence all sweetness; oh may my being pause
Soon beside thee!

Welcome me soon!
As to the queenly moon,
Man's homage to my beauty sets;
Yet am I a rose-shrub budding regrets:
Welcome me soon.

Soul of my soul!
Have me not half, but whole.
Dear dust, thou art my eyes, my breath!
Draw me to thee down the dark sea of death,
Soul of my soul!

And she sang:

Sad are they who drink life's cup
Till they have come to the bitter-sweet:
Better at once to toss it up,
And trample it beneath the feet;
For venom-charged as serpents' eggs
'Tis then, and knows not other change.
Early, early, early, have I reached the dregs
Of life, and loathe and love the bittersweet, revenge!

Then turned she aside, and sang musingly:

I came to his arms like the flower of the spring,
And he was my bird of the radiant wing:
He flutter'd above me a moment, and won
The bliss of my breast as a beam of the sun,
Untouch'd and untasted till then--

The voice in her throat was like a drowning creature, and she rose up,
and chanted wildly:

I weep again?

What play is this? for the thing is dead in me long since:
Will all the reviving rain
Of heaven bring me back my Prince?
But I, when I weep, when I weep,
Blood will I weep!
And when I weep,
Sons for fathers shall weep;
Mothers for sons shall weep;
Wives for husbands shall weep!
Earth shall complain of floods red and deep,
When I weep!

Upon that she ran up a secret passage to her chamber and rubbed the
Jewel, and called the serpents, to delight her soul with the sight of her
power, and rolled and sported madly among them, clutching them by the
necks till their thin little red tongues hung out, and their eyes were as
discoloured blisters of venom. Then she arose, and her arms and neck and
lips were glazed with the slime of the serpents, and she flung off her
robes to the close-fitting silken inner vest looped across her bosom with
pearls, and whirled in a mazy dance-measure am